Yes, Paltan. Two successive defeats to begin the season. Not the ideal start but we have a whole two months in front of us.

Nonetheless, everything didn’t go entirely wrong for us in the #GTvMI encounter and we do have plenty of positives to take ahead of our first home game of the campaign against the Kolkata Knight Riders on Monday.

Appearing at the post-match press conference, our pacer Trent Boult gave his assessment on how the Red Soil vs Black Soil narrative dictated the proceedings of the game.

“Good tactics from the opposition. If you have those options to do that, it obviously makes sense, but I don't think we'll be using it as an excuse.

“There are players in our team that have played all over the country on all different types of wickets. So, in all honesty, just an off game tonight, I thought they [GT] scrapped their way to a good total and they showed us how to bowl on that wicket. So full credit to them,” he said.

“I think it was just good thinking of using home tactics to your advantage. Obviously, there should be an advantage for the home team. But like I said, not an excuse from our point of view. We understood the wicket was black soil and I don't think we just didn't adjust nicely enough,” Boult concluded.

Addressing questions about the team’s batting unit, Boult felt it’s too early in the season to jump to a certain conclusion.

“Too early in the season. It's a long tournament. There are some very quality players that have scored lots of runs, across all formats around the world, so the experience is there.

“We understand this game can be tough for both bowlers and batters. And, yeah, we've had two [tough] games. I don't think we're gonna look too much into it. Hopefully, we can turn it around very quickly,” the fast bowler said.

Furthermore, the Kiwi also spoke about what went wrong in the game and how his team could’ve, perhaps, performed better.

“Well, they got 36 more runs than us. That's what went wrong. I think we can just be 1 or 2% better. They took the pace out of the ball, making the batters play big shots combined with scoreboard pressure, that's just good cricket.

“I think the fielding is a part of the game that can never be excused. I think we're a little bit off the field today. Take a catch there on the boundary. Save a couple of boundaries. You know, there's maybe 20 or 30 runs there. So, yeah, time to move on and look forward to doing that,” Boult said.

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Alright then, just a day’s gap before we step on our home turf at Wankhede. A day where the team will, together, work on getting the ‘wrongs’ right and eventually, apply the learnings through the rest of the competition. 💪

We believe & we move forward with our heads held high!!!