Mumbai Indians

On the one hand the Royal Challengers Bangalore is appearing as a team that seems to have done its homework rather well, Mumbai Indians is not able to operate as a well oiled unit. Is it owing to the fact that the team is too much dependent on the fortunes of Sachin Tendulkar to see it through? In the first match that Mumbai Indians played, after a scintillating 69, and a blistering knock by Pollard, the team should have sailed through. But it could not and eventually lose the match.

Royal Challengers on the other hand played to clinical precision and pocketed the match with relative ease. Everybody had his role defined and it all clicked. The bowling performance of the RCB was the deciding factor, while for Mumbai Indians it is the bowlers who are not clicking as a unit. Zaheer Khan, though on a comeback trail does not have the same fire power as he used to have in his heydays. If one were to analyze the performance of Zaheer Khan one thing that would emerge as a recurring motif would be the fact that Zaheer during his spell of allotted over has been thrashed in a particular over and that over has ultimately become the deciding factor. If one were to travel down memory lane, Zaheer Khan really lost his momentum in South Africa itself in the finals against Australia when Ricky Ponting thrashed him and he never came out of that harrowing experience.  Subsequent to that final, in most of his matches Zaheer has conceded runs in one over and it has literally changed the texture of the game.

This then being the situation, the question to be asked is, whether Mumbai Indians should look for a new pace bowler that could bolster their attack. A new season of IPL is around the corner, and it indeed is the time when Mumbai Indians should start thinking about finding a replacement for Zaheer Khan.

The need for replacement is more as imperative as it creates quite a lot of pressure on Harbhajan Singh and it has an effect on his performance as well. Harbhajan is even otherwise sharing the burden, but the time has come to shed the load and let new faces be saddled with the responsibility.

By: Suman Rai

Tags: Cricket, MI, Mumbai Indians, RCB, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Sachin Tendulkar