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Mumbai Indians’ think tank, along with skipper Hardik Pandya, faced heavy trolling over the shocking and bizarre decision to retire out Tilak Verma during the match against the Lucknow Super Giants. However, it has now been revealed that the controversial call was not made by captain Hardik Pandya, but by someone else within the Mumbai Indians’ management.
Coach Mahela Jayawardene Owns Up to the Call
In a surprising twist, Mumbai Indians’ head coach Mahela Jayawardene stepped forward to claim full responsibility for retiring Tilak Verma out during a crucial moment in the run chase.
Tilak, who was brought in as an impact substitute, managed 25 runs off 23 balls before being retired out in the penultimate over of the innings.
Jayawardene justified his decision by stating that Tilak, despite being in the middle for a while, was unable to time the ball well. The coach felt it was better to bring in a fresh batter to make the most of the final overs.
“Tilak batted well for us when we lost that (third) wicket and that partnership with Surya. He wanted to get going but just couldn’t and waited till the last few overs hoping; because you spent some time, you should have been able to get that hit out of the way. But I felt that in the end, I just needed someone fresh to have a go when he was struggling. These things happen in cricket, and it was not nice to take him out, but I had to do that. That was a tactical decision at that point,” Jayawardene said during the post-match press conference.
Hardik Pandya’s Redemption With the Ball
While the unusual retire-out call stirred controversy, Hardik Pandya found redemption through his bowling performance.
Though he failed to make an impact with the bat, Hardik roared back with the ball, producing a career-best T20 spell.
He grabbed his maiden five-wicket haul in T20 cricket — an achievement that also made him the first IPL captain to take a five-for.
“With the experience that he has, he realised that this [bowling slow and back of length] is what he probably needs to do because we did leak too many runs in the powerplay. We just needed to take a bit of pace off, which we should have done in the powerplay as well. I think that’s why these guys are experienced; they adapt to conditions pretty well, see what the opportunities present, and he definitely, with the ball, he pulled the game back for us and gave us a pretty decent chance of chasing this total,” Jayawardene added.
Hardik’s figures of 5/36 included big names like Aiden Markram, Nicholas Pooran, Rishabh Pant, and David Miller.
He returned to bowl the final over and cleaned up Akash Deep to finish his impressive spell, giving MI a fighting chance in what had been a tough chase.
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