Designing a bowling strategy against Yashasvi Jaiswal and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is never easy when they’re set. Jasprit Bumrah, despite his usual reputation as a strike bowler, found the task particularly challenging on Tuesday in Guwahati.
Mumbai Indians (MI) coach Mahela Jayawardene admitted that the side’s plan did not translate into execution during their IPL 2026 match against Rajasthan Royals (RR). “Yeah, I think we had some plans, but I don’t think, being honest, that we ever executed those plans the way we wanted,” he said after the loss.
Jayawardene pointed to how fine the margins were at the press conference following the game. “The margins are very small,” he said. “The guys are batting really well. We knew the danger—especially when the rain [curtailed the game to 11 over per side] and you have the license to go up front. So we needed to make sure that first four, five overs were crucial for us. I thought we pulled very well to get back from the start that they had, and yeah, I think we missed our lengths, we missed our lines, and they played really, really well.”
When RR were asked to bat first, they scored 22 in the opening over, with Deepak Chahar bowling it. After five overs, the Royals were 80 for 1. Jayawardene’s assessment was that MI did fight back, but the catch-up effort wasn’t enough because the early damage had already been done. Between overs six and ten, MI allowed just 52 runs, and the final over of the innings brought 18 more—but the earlier setback proved too costly.
While Jaiswal was the headline attraction with 77 not out off 32 balls, the impact of the innings was equally shaped by Sooryavanshi. He struck 39 off 14 deliveries. Dale Steyn went a step further in explaining the psychological effect of Sooryavanshi on bowlers, suggesting even the game’s elite—Bumrah included—can get thrown off mentally when facing him.
Steyn said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show, focusing on Bumrah’s first-ball delivery to Sooryavanshi that sailed over mid-on: “I think that’s what he’s done. I mean, honestly, he’s created and instilled the fear into bowlers that he’s going to hit you for boundaries. That delivery from Bumrah. That’s in the slot. That’s so rare of Bumrah. So even the great Bumrah is thinking in the back of his mind: ‘don’t get it wrong; because if I get it wrong, this guy’s going to hit me for six.’”
That fear, Steyn suggested, is exactly what Sooryavanshi has been producing. Even when bowlers don’t miss badly, the batter’s ability makes the margin for error microscopic.
Steyn elaborated on how mindset can interfere with execution. “I feel, if you think like that, more often than not, you do get it wrong,” he said about the way bowlers start thinking. “You can see even when he’s hit him for six, he [Bumrah] almost started to laugh afterwards and then go, ‘I knew that was going to happen if I got it wrong’. And that’s exactly what happened.”
He then described the consequences of any slight lapse. “And this kid’s not scared, man. If you miss a half-volley, he’s going to hit you out of the ground. So drag your length back and hit a good length and you might be on the money with him. Miss and you’re traveling the distance. It doesn’t matter who you are, Bumrah or Joe Average. You know, so that’s fantastic batting.”
Aaron Finch, speaking on the same programme, questioned what Bumrah’s plan might have been against Sooryavanshi.
Finch said, “I think he’s looking for an inswinging yorker first ball. Vaibhav’s obviously got a big, high back lift. He’s got fast hands, but with that high back lift, means you can be vulnerable to a good fast yorker first up. So I think that he’s gone for that. And he just mis-executed, can happen.”
Finch also highlighted how thinking can disrupt a bowler’s natural skill set. “But it’s amazing the effect that your mind has on your skill level, doesn’t it? Because if you’re thinking, ‘oh, don’t miss in the slot’, what do you do? You miss in the slot. Because that’s what your body is thinking about. Your body doesn’t understand the word ‘don’t’. So yeah, right—slot… You’re worried about missing rather than when Bumrah, when he’s at the top of his game, he stands at the top of the mark, and he says, ‘right, this is what I’m going to execute, and done’. More often than [not], he does it.”
In that context, MI’s chase still showed fight. The target they faced was set by RR at 150 for 3, and MI ended up making 123 for 9 in response. In an 11-over contest, that was not a disastrous effort. However, RR kept taking wickets at regular intervals. The most productive MI partnership was 47 for the sixth wicket, but by then the chase was already slipping out of reach.
Jayawardene explained MI’s approach after the match, stressing that they believed they had the batting resources to chase a comparable total. “I think if a team batting first gets a score, I think you can get that as well. I think we have the capability, we have the batsmen to do it,” he said. “We just needed a couple of partnerships. [We] lost a few early wickets and we lost momentum. If you look at the end, it was, what, four sixes was the difference [27 runs]. So it was four hits for us. And we just couldn’t find that. And that’s without us getting into a rhythm and maybe one or two batsmen, really, getting a quick 30 or a 40 in that top.”
He concluded by underlining that the result was more about MI’s starts and partnerships than any sense that the target was impossible. “I don’t think it was that we thought that it was out of our reach. It was about us getting a good start or a couple of the partnerships going deeper.”
