Mumbai Indians succumbed to their 10th defeat of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 to end the season at the bottom of the points table. Chasing 216 against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in their last match of the season, the five-time champions were kept to 196/6, falling 18 runs short of a pride-saving win.
Rohit Sharma was back to his best but it wasn’t enough to stop another woeful chapter being added to MI’s nightmarish season. It was the second time in the past three seasons that they were eliminated from the playoffs race with a bottom-of-the-table finish.
After Rohit’s 38-ball 68 set a strong platform in the chase, Naman Dhir gave a fine exhibition of his talent with a half-century of his own. But it came when all was lost. The MI batters failed to keep the momentum going in the middle overs and finished at 196 for six in 20 overs to hand LSG a consolation win as their playoffs hopes also came to an end.
Speaking after the loss, MI captain Hardik Pandya admitted the team wasn’t up to the mark throughout the campaign.
“Quite difficult, this season we didn’t play good quality cricket and it cost us the whole season. It’s a professional world, sometimes there’ll be good and sometimes bad days. As a group, we didn’t play quality and smart cricket and it showed in the results. Too early to exactly point out what went wrong tonight. The whole season kind of went wrong. We can pass on this game and look forward to the next season,” said Pandya to the broadcasters.
