Mumbai Indians lost their second away game of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 against Kings XI Punjab at the Punjab Cricket Association IS Bindra Stadium in Mohali on Saturday. Chasing 177 to win, KXIP beat MI with 8 balls and 8 wickets to spare. MI’s batsmen got starts, but none of them converted them into big knocks as our bowlers failed to defend 176 against a strong batting unit.

After the game, MI’s bowling coach Shane Bond rued how none of our batsmen went on to get a big score after getting starts. “I think we have probably created a habit, we have got ourselves into strong positions, set batsmen have got out and we have had two new players at the crease in the last five overs. And we haven’t been able to keep up the scores we would like. We still scored 176, which is a good score but to be honest I felt we were about 20 runs short,” he told reporters at the post-match press conference.

He continued: “I think the wicket today was a bit bowler-friendly, there was enough there to make it difficult if we bowled straight through the length. I thought we did not do that long enough, I thought we bowled with too much width, too full and Chris Gayle took his time. We knew how Chris (Gayle) was going to play; he would try to see off (Jasprit) Bumrah, (Lasith) Malinga and then he would go after our spinners. We tried to delay that as long as we could and Krunal (Pandya) worked perfectly in getting him out.”

Bond insisted that Quinton de Kock’s dismissal had a huge bearing on the contest. The South African wicketkeeper had smashed 60 from 39 before being trapped in front of the stumps. “I don’t think Gayle’s 40 was the turning point. When we got him out, they needed about 10 runs an over. I was pretty confident that if we bowled how we should then, we could win the game. I thought de Kock’s dismissal was a big one, we were poised there with him at the crease. Our idea was that the Pandya brothers and (Kieron) Pollard would bat around him for the last six overs. Then we would have been capable of scoring 200… We are still getting to good scores around 180 but the positions we are getting ourselves into, we could almost get match-winning ones but we haven’t been good enough to do that, which is disappointing.”” he said.

When asked about the positives MI could take from this game, the Kiwi legend added: “I think de Kock is playing well, I think he has done well so far and it’s nice to see him kick on and get a higher score. In terms of the bowling performance, not too much to be fair. I thought Bumrah bowled well in the first couple of overs, which he always does, but in general I thought we have been very inconsistent. I thought we bowled really well in the Bangalore game, I think in a small ground, AB de Villiers hit the placement shots to get close to our score and I don’t mind losing when a fine player or great player is forced to play great shots which he did. But I don’t think today we forced them to play great shots, we dished out too much for them and they were good enough to put them away and then they took it home and won quite comfortably. They deserved to win.”