Mumbai Indians’ IPL 2026 campaign ended on a sour note, and even a chance to close out the league stage with a win did not come their way. The five-time champions were handed yet another loss in their last match of the regular season.
MI finished ninth in the 10-team standings after falling to Rajasthan Royals by 30 runs in their final league encounter. The defeat marked Mumbai’s 10th loss in 14 games, underlining how tough the season had been for the franchise.
After the result, batting coach Kieron Pollard acknowledged that captain Hardik Pandya’s leadership stint had not worked out as hoped. “From a leadership perspective on Hardik, yes, it has not gone as well as he would have wanted as an individual,” Pollard said following the match. “It might not have gone how we would have wanted as a management staff. But one thing you (should) know is that we have tried each and everything to give him the best opportunity to lead the franchise, to do well.”
Pollard also pushed back against the idea that the disappointing season could be pinned on any single person, framing it as a broader team setback. “No one is going to sit here and put blame on point fingers. When you lose, especially, you have to look at it from a collective perspective. You win some, you lose some. But, at the end of the day, I wouldn’t question certain things,” he said. “He (Pandya) was trying; we all were trying, and it just didn’t work out for us. You sit, you talk, (and) see what is (for the) best. Never know what is going to happen. For us, let us just lick our wounds in (this) time and hopefully come back stronger in the 12 months.”
When asked whether Mumbai would need a fresh start given the number of senior players in the squad, Pollard said the franchise would take time first to understand what went wrong before making any calls. “Right now, is not the time and place to talk about that,” he said. “All these things would be sort of emotional decisions and thinking of every aspect of what is needed. Everyone needs that time and space to go sit down, recollect, have a fair assessment as to where everything actually went wrong for us.”
He added that decisions should be grounded in careful evaluation rather than immediate reaction. “That is where better decision-making is going to come about. If you sit here right now and say you need to do this, you need to do that, that would be irresponsible from a management perspective,” Pollard said.
While Mumbai Indians had finished third in IPL 2025, the 2026 season brought a steep decline for one of the competition’s most successful franchises.
