Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya left the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday visibly frustrated and unusually guarded in his emotions after the franchise suffered a third straight defeat in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026. MI’s final outing had them up against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and despite the familiar surroundings of home ground, the match ended in a heavy loss. In the dressing room, Pandya gathered the entire squad and delivered a blunt message about what comes next—either withdraw into their own shells to brood and analyse, or regroup as a team and confront the setbacks together.
Bengaluru set the tone early with a towering total of 240 runs, and MI never found the rhythm needed to chase it down. The batting effort for RCB was driven by Phil Salt, Virat Kohli, and Rajat Patidar, whose contributions helped build a score that proved too steep for the Mumbai side. In the chase, MI looked perpetually one step behind the required pace and eventually fell short by 18 runs. Sherfane Rutherford was the lone亮 spark for the chase, striking through the innings and taking the RCB bowlers on, but even his stand wasn’t enough to swing the result in MI’s favour.
Pandya’s remarks echoed what coach Mahela Jayawardene had said just moments earlier in the same dressing room—an emphasis on unity rather than isolation. The captain framed the next phase as a choice between retreat and togetherness, urging the players to learn from the loss without disappearing mentally. “Thinking from what MJ said, I think here there are two options we can do. One is go back in our rooms, go back into our cocoon spaces and try to figure it out. I know it’s tough losing but let’s learn… let’s not get disappeared. But let’s learn. It’s always winning and learning, never losing. So let’s do that. That’s something which tonight after the game, once we go back to hotel, we’ll have a meal together, we’ll talk about cricket. We’ll talk about something else but we’ll figure it out,” Hardik said to the group.
After the match, the captain also opened up about the bowling unit’s struggles, admitting that significant changes may be required to stop the slide. He pointed to MI conceding far too many runs and stressed that the 241-run target, set by RCB, was always going to demand constant chase pressure. Hardik said the team has recently been more in recovery mode than taking control, whether with bat or ball, and insisted the side must reassess how it creates momentum in matches. “I think we conceded way too many runs. I think that (241-run target) was always going to be catch-up. I think in the last couple of games, as a bowling unit or even as a batting unit, we’ve been quite catching up in the game rather than leading the game. We really need to reflect, really need to see what best we can do and how we can get that momentum and that click which we require,” he said.
With a couple of days off before the next fixture, Hardik indicated the team will use the break to reset and explore alternatives. He also questioned whether simply winning the toss has been translating into the right matchups and execution, particularly in relation to the pitch and conditions. “We have a couple of days off from here and we will play again. (bat second the way to go here?) To be very honest, now a lot of things needs to be rethink. Definitely, it’s not working. Couple of games we have won the toss, but maybe we need to see what other options we have as a batting group or bowling group. Looking at the kind of wicket it’s playing, if we can bat as well, that would be good. We still need to play cricket, we still need to bat well, we still need to bowl well,” Hardik added.
