Kolkata, May 21 (IANS) Mumbai Indians (MI) bowling coach Paras Mhambrey said the side remains focused on playing quality 40 overs of cricket and learning from mistakes after suffering a four-wicket loss to Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens.
Mumbai Indians, who had already been eliminated from the playoff race before the match, slumped to their ninth defeat in 13 matches this season and remained ninth on the points table with eight points.
Reflecting on the campaign, Mhambrey said the team’s focus throughout the tournament had been on finding ways to win matches and improving as a unit.
“Our preparation is simple: look at winning the games. That’s what we’ve been doing,” Mhambrey said said in a post-match presser. The focus on this game, as well as earlier games, is winning. And we want to look back and say: how do you work around constructing a team, what are the things that we need to learn from this game and take it to the next game, which allows us to win a game?”
Mhambrey believes that while outside results and points-table changes often create discussions, the team’s priority remained executing its plans properly on the field.
“We can only control what we can control, and what we can control is going out there and playing quality 40 overs of cricket and winning the game, and leave the results or the positions in the table for someone else to look into,” headed.
Mumbai’s fielding errors also proved costly during the chase, including a dropped catch of Rovman Powell. However, Mhambrey defended his players and said such mistakes are part of the game.
“No one does it on purpose. You drop catches. It just happens, part of the game. Yes, if you look at it in hindsight and say that catch at that stage would have been 15 or 20 runs extra, yeah. But I’m not going to blame anyone out here.”
The bowling coach instead praised Corbin Bosch for his outstanding effort in the field later in the innings, where he dismissed Powell with a diving catch at backward point.
“If you look at Corbin, he took a brilliant catch. So you compensate it for that, right?” Mhambrey said.
–IANS
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