Mumbai Indians’ (MI) bowling coach Shane Bond reckoned his team’s bowling hasn’t been up to the mark in the 2022 Indian Premier League (IPL). Bond, one of the fastest bowlers during his heydays, said that the MI bowlers have shown a tendency to crumble under pressure.

Bond was of the opinion that MI had the chance to secure victories in all three matches, but failed to capitalise on the chances given to them. After losing all their games in the ongoing tournament, Rohit Sharma and Co. are struggling at the bottom half of the points table.

On Wednesday, MI was seeming to get the Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) by the scruff of their necks before Pat Cummins wreaked havoc. Cummins smashed a 15-ball 56 and made a mockery of the MI pace attack. His knock helped the Knights win with as many as 24 balls to spare.

However, Bond, also a former New Zealand pacer, believed that the Mumbai-based team has every chance of staging a comeback if they up their game in crunch moments.

‘Simple Fix’

“It’s been a real mixed bag from us, I suppose from a bowling unit,” Bond said. “You look at the last game; the first ten overs were fantastic. We had a couple of overs that got away from us. It’s been a little bit of a pattern for us, that we’ve done some really good stuff, we’ve taken out a number of the big players exactly how we thought we would – but when the game’s been in the balance, we’ve gone for some overs of 20-plus. And when you go for overs of 20-plus, then you end up losing matches.

“It’s a simple fix really. If we can stick to our plans and stick to the areas we want to bowl when the pressure comes on, then I’ll think you’ll see a turnaround,” Bond was quoted as saying.

The MI bowlers kept their team in the game, although Venkatesh Iyer had scored a half-century. Andre Russell, who has been in jaw-dropping form of late, also perished cheaply. But Cummins’ knock took the five-time IPL champions by absolute surprise.

“As I said, I think we’ve seen that when we’ve executed our plans the way that we wanted to, we’ve been really successful. We saw it in the last game against Andre Russell. Venkatesh Iyer, we made him work really hard for a fifty and bowled really well to him. We’ve just had one player who’s come out in each game and hit 30-plus off sort of 10-11 balls which has taken the game away from us,” Bond added.

Rohit’s men are next scheduled to face Faf du Plessis’ Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Saturday, April 9.