OPINION
Follow UsIf you’re a Mumbai Indians fan, it’s probably panic stations time. Your team has played four, lost all four and is reeling at the very bottom of the table, giving good company to Chennai Super Kings. The prospect of making it to the playoffs looks like a distant dream.
But after tonight, it’s no longer the performances that you need to be distressed about. There is a bigger cause for concern — the team is actively digging a hole for itself even before the commencement of matches, through some questionable decision making.
Versus the Knight Riders, the five-time champs’ decision to axe Tim David felt harsh and premature. David, after all, had endured just two failures, something that’s completely expected of a finisher.
Tonight against the Royal Challengers, they went one step further and benched Tymal Mills, a bowler who, across the first three matches, had bowled far better than his figures suggested. They also benched Daniel Sams, but that was expected following his horror start to the season.
What invoked curiosity, though, was the replacement(s). Mumbai replaced Mills with Jaydev Unadkat, a decision which, according to Zaheer Khan, was taken keeping in mind the conditions. Justifiable, one could say.
But in place of Sams, they opted to play Punjab’s Ramandeep Singh, leaving the side with just two overseas players in the XI. Post the encounter, Rohit Sharma revealed that the change was made in order to strengthen the batting.
“Just went with the combination that would be ideal, we wanted to strengthen our batting. Unfortunately we had few overseas guys who were unavailable, so we wanted to get the best from whatever we had,” Rohit answered, when quizzed about the decision to play just two overseas players.
Perhaps Fabian Allen and Riley Meredith were among those that were ‘unavailable’. Maybe that explains why they were not considered. But Tim David was certainly among those who were available — the right-hander, at one point in the game, was fielding at long-on as a substitute.
Yet, despite being purchased for a whopping INR 8.25 crore at the auction, the Australian was unable to get into the XI ahead of Ramandeep Singh, a rookie who’d batted just 7 times in T20s prior to Saturday.
What prompted Mumbai to make the decision remains unknown. But either way, it is the management who have come out of this looking bad, particularly after Rohit’s claim that the decisions were made in order to ‘strengthen the batting’.
For if you’re benching your 8.25 crore signee after just two games, when he has pretty much proven himself in all the other franchise leagues, it reeks of impatience.
Conversely, if you feel that he could not do as good a job as a rookie lower-order batter who has only played a handful of professional T20 games (all at the lower level), it makes your own auction strategy look silly.
After all, you were the one who shelled millions of dollars on the guy at the auction table, based on all the scouting your own scouts did. What does it say of your recruitment if the player cannot even make the starting XI ahead of a 18-year-old and 24-year-old, both uncapped, unproven and inexperienced?
Not that having David in the XI would have made too much of a difference at the MCA Stadium on Saturday anyway.
Mumbai were comprehensively outplayed by the Royal Challengers, who thoroughly deserved to take back to the dressing room the two points. They were behind the eight-ball from mid-way through the first innings, playing catch-up for 75% of the contest. And although a sensational knock from Suryakumar Yadav provided a brief glimmer of hope, at no point was the game in the balance.
But for a franchise that has historically been known for its astute decision making, the calls Mumbai made on Saturday were egregious.
Quite the irony that it had to happen against a Royal Challengers side that, not too long ago, was guilty of similar crimes. If there’s one trait that has historically defined RCB as a franchise, it’s impatience. For years, RCB has been synonymous with bad decisions, baffling selections and unnecessary chopping and changing.
Yet, on Saturday, it was the Reds’ stability and clarity that stood out against Mumbai, ultimately helping them crush their opponents en route breaking into the Top Three.
It spoke volumes that at the MCA stadium, Bangalore made their first change of the season, bringing in Glenn Maxwell for Sherfane Rutherford. The management, all along, had little doubt what the team’s strongest XI was, and trusted the process. Deservedly, they reaped the rewards for it.
While Mumbai were left ruing their decisions at the auction, RCB were the beneficiaries of smart investment.
Even before the auction, they’d identified young Anuj Rawat as one of their core batters for the season; in one of the mock auctions they did, Rawat was purchased for a handsome sum of INR 2.8 crore.
At the actual auction the 22-year-old cost 60 lakh extra (INR 3.40 crore) but against Mumbai, the southpaw showed why the Reds were willing to break the bank for him.
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So as much as RCB’s seven-wicket victory on Saturday was down to the brilliance of the players and their execution, it was equally due to the decisions made by the management, whose vision seems crystal clear.
We’re already living in a weird world timeline — Messi is no longer at Barca, Stone Cold just came out of retirement to wrestle, Joe Root being the best converter in the world etc — so RCB being more stable as a side than MI fits right in. Mumbai and Rohit will be wondering how it has come down to this.
