The game between Kings XI Punjab should have been an easy battle to win for us but not everything went according to plan. It was tough for the team to be uprooted from our home ground and adapt to a new location in such a short span of time. Rohit Sharma commented on this occurrence, “Wankhede is a good track, the ball comes on nicely. It’s not easy for the batsmen. You got to rotate properly as much as possible. If you don’t rotate then the pressure keeps building on. As we have seen in the last games played here, it’s tough to get 8-9 runs an over as the wicket keeps getting slower and slower. It’s important to capitalize on the first six overs really well and then the middle overs you just try to knock it around and try to get 6-7 an over. We weren’t able to do that today. We lost early wickets in the power play. It’s difficult for the new batsman to continue and to rotate strike. Whenever you lose wickets upfront it is going to be tough. It was hard in the end for our middle order to rotate strike. On a wicket like this the first 10 overs are pretty important”.

Rohit further defends his decision of not chasing tonight even as this year we have seen that it’s easier to chase a total than set one. He also feels that the team wasn’t able to cope with putting up a big total on a slow pitch as this. “Wicket keeps getting slower and slower. We didn’t put up enough runs on the board. Had we put up 140 or more, it would have been a different ball game. I don’t think we should have chased, as we saw that in the last game here between Chennai and Pune and the latter found it really difficult to chase total of 138. I think you should post a good total and then defend it well. Anything above 135 is a good score here.”

Rohit did stress on the importance of the initial overs that set the tone of the game. No losses in these over and the batsmen will have the momentum to surge ahead. “It’s a matter of getting through the first six overs, they batted well without losing a wicket. When you have a score of 125 to chase, you don’t need to take risks. When we batted we had to bat the first six overs really well and put pressure on them, which is why we went for shots and by doing so we lost wickets. For them it was a challenge to get through the first six overs and they did it well.”

The reason Rohit played two seamers tonight was because he believes that the MI seamers have performed consistently. “Our seamers have performed consistently throughout the tournament. In the last game against RCB we were able to restrict them to 150 which was something incredible and I don’t think anyone in the tournament has been able to keep them under 150.” He admits the batting order needs work and will take the necessary decision to up the ante, “We know that now we need to win two out of two and batting is something that will be looked into.”