IPL 2021: While the nature of the Sharjah pitch may have played a role in Rajasthan Royals’ (RR) crushing defeat to Mumbai Indians (MI) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) on Tuesday, head coach Kumar Sangakkara believes the problem is more with the team’s inability to adapt.
As RR’s chances of making the play-offs were dealt a huge blow on Tuesday, Sangakkara believed both bowlers and batsmen might have done better. MI chased down the target in a little over eight overs after restricting the 2008 winners to 90/0.
“You could probably say that,” Sangakkara told the media when asked about the toss affecting the result.
“We haven’t played here at Sharjah before, and watching the other games, it seems to be slightly better in the night. And today there was probably a little bit more pace. But once we had only 90 on the board, it was really tough unless you had this amazing powerplay with wickets and very few runs,” he said.
“The crucial part for us as we were 42 [41] for 1 after the powerplay, and the plan was then to extend it beyond the 13th-14th over with at least seven wickets in hand. So that we could really target a bowler or two and build that platform in the 15th over. Unfortunately, we didn’t adapt, Mumbai bowled very well, and we lost too many wickets and we could never attack at any stage. So probably the fault lies more with us than the pitch or the toss,” said Sangakkara.
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Former Sri Lanka captain Mahinda Rajapaksa noted that grounds like the ones available in Sharjah are important for evaluating a team’s strategy and skills in terms of scoring, even if they don’t provide high-scoring T20 contests.
Read more: Brad Hogg says “Knowing that AB de Villiers is there behind him” in IPL 2021
Visit also: Gautam Gambhir says “It’s not an irrelevant encounter” in the IPL 2021