IPL 2023Mumbai Indians were poor with the ball in last four overs, says Shane Bond after loss to LSG

By India Today Sports DeskBowling coach Shane Bond reckoned that Mumbai Indians (MI) were not up to the mark with the ball in their last four overs of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 match against the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) at the Ekana Stadium in on Tuesday, May 16.

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The Super Giants racked up 60 runs in their last four overs after Marcus Stoinis went hammer and tongs to score 89 not out off 47 balls with four fours and eight sixes. LSG went on to score 177 for the loss of three wickets.

Bond also felt that MI slowed down a wee bit in their innings after Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan took them off to a flying start.

“Two periods in the game for us where with the ball, in particular; the last four overs were poor. And the little period in the middle of our batting where two of our most in-form batters (Suryakumar Yadav and Nehal Wadhera) scored 23 off 30 balls between them. Those two little periods of cricket combined for us to lose the game by a handful of runs. We back ourselves to chase down any score. We did a great job for 15 overs, but let it go at the end,” Bond was quoted as saying in the post-match press conference.

Bond also backed Cameron Green to come good after the right-handed batter failed to take MI past the finish line. With 11 runs needed off the last over, Green could only manage to score four runs off six balls as the Mumbai-based team lost the match by five runs.

“It is not a case of being up to the mark. You look over the last few games that we won; he just slipped down to No.7. He hasn’t batted a lot and it was same tonight. He couldn’t get the runs, but he has been an important part of our team. He was at No.3 and did a great job for us. It’s just turned out that we have used other players and Surya, in particular, who pushed up to No.3, which has pushed Green to the backend of the innings,” he added.

MI are currently placed fourth in the table with 14 points and a net run rate of -0.128 thanks to wins in seven out of 13 matches.