Nothing explains the dismal performance of the Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 season so far. Seven matches in, the franchise has lost five and won just two. The five-time champions are currently at the eighth spot in the points table, and if the Hardik Pandya-led side wants to have any chance of making it to the playoffs, the team must win at least six out of their remaining seven fixtures. The troubles for the Mumbai Indians compounded on Thursday after going down by 103 runs against the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the Wankhede Stadium.
Post the loss, Mumbai Indians head coach Mahela Jayawardene cut a sorry figure, lost for words to describe the shellacking his team received. The former Sri Lanka captain conceded that his team hasn’t been able to string together consistent performances, which has been the main reason the team has languished in the bottom half of the points table.
The game against CSK saw Mumbai fold for 104 in their chase of 208. No batter was able to show any sort of fight. Even with the ball, dishing out loose deliveries in the powerplay cost the team big, and it’s no surprise that Jayawardene pinned the loss to the abysmal showing in the first six overs with both bat and ball.
“The reality is that four points after seven games, honestly, we haven’t played good cricket. It’s been in patches. We’ve had a great game in Ahmedabad. I thought we found some rhythm, but we lost it again. Probably this game, once you lose a match like that, it’s difficult even to analyse it, but probably the two power plays where we lost both the power plays with the ball and with the bat, we just couldn’t get to the game,” Jayawardene told reporters during the post-match press conference.
“But as I said, we got a little break now, it gives us some time to really sit down and think about what we need to do in the next seven matches, and we know exactly what we need to do. And we’ll plan and put our best foot out,” he added.
‘Hole in the bowling’
Jayawardene also said there was a big hole in the Mumbai Indians’ bowling in the previous games, and the franchise made a conscious decision to move on from names like Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur.
“If you analyse the seven games, yes, there was a hole in our bowling and we got some fresh faces in there, Ahmedabad looked good, again here, I thought in patches we bowled well, it’s just execution-wise, consistency, I think one of the teams was given the highest number of big overs, 18-plus overs, if you look at the half-season, that number puts us in a very bad position for us to even to claw back into a game when you give that 20-plus runs, it’s tough,” said Jayawardene.
“So these are areas that we need to improve. We haven’t managed to control things in away conditions and stuff like that. That’s an overall thing. If you look at it in batting as well, we have been good, but we have had some patches where we haven’t been consistent. It’s not one individual. As a team, we all have to improve,” he added.
Mumbai Indians now have a seven-day break, and the team will next take the field against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Wednesday, April 29.