IPL 2021: In The First Half We Focused Too Much On The Wickets And Not Much On Our Game - Ishan Kishan Highlights Struggle Of Mumbai Indians On Chennai Pitch

As the IPL 2021 is now set to resume in over a month, Ishan Kishan highlighted why Mumbai Indians struggled in their initial matches in Chennai in the first half of the tournament. The defending champions lost their first match of the season – keeping up with their long tradition – and went onto lose two more from the next four in Chennai, before moving to Delhi and winning both the matches there.

Ishan Kishan reckoned the team was thinking too much about the slow, spin-friendly Chepauk pitch – where almost every batsmen found difficult to score runs, let alone do it with alacrity – instead of focusing on their own game.

The left-hander himself was dropped after the 5 games in Chennai where he scored 73 runs at a strike rate of 82.95.

“Whenever we start a tournament, we do a team huddle where we discuss what we want to do this year. Like last year, we wanted to break the odd-even thing of winning the IPL and we did that in Dubai. The plan this season was to win the first match of the season because more or less we have lost the first matches of every IPL season,” Ishan Kishan said while speaking on Aakash Chopra’s YouTube channel.

“We also lost our first match of this year in Chennai but what happened in the first half was that we were focusing too much on the wickets and not much on our game and what we can do on that particular day. We realised that late but as soon as we landed in Delhi we knew how the wickets are and we won two back-to-back matches and made a comeback. We need to brush aside these thoughts because we play only on these kinds of wickets in domestic cricket,” Ishan Kishan added.

We know deep inside that whatever the situation is we will overcome and win: Ishan Kishan

The 23-year-old, who has grown plenty in stature with fifties on both his India T20I and ODI debut, talked about the ever-confident and uplifting environment in the Mumbai dressing room which has helped them become the most successful franchise in the IPL.

“The environment in the dressing room is like even if we lose 3 out of 3 matches the players are on the same page. We believe that we are going to win our next 4 matches and make a comeback in the tournament.

“This belief is because of the hard work that we put in before the tournament as we start preparing one month before the other teams. We know deep inside that whatever the situation is we will overcome and win,” he added.

Rohit Sharma will lead his outfit for the first game of the UAE leg of IPL 2021, against MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings on September 19.