On Sunday night, the hosts Mumbai Indians (MI) suffered a 7-wicket defeat (with 12 balls to spare) in their important game against Rajasthan Royals (RR) at Wankhede Stadium (Mumbai).

Rajasthan captain Ajinkya Rahane decided to field first after winning the toss. MI openers started very well but due to their middle-order batting failure, MI managed to score 168/6 in 20 overs.

In reply, in-form opener Jos Buttler once again guided his team to a crucial victory as the visiting side reached the target in 18 overs after losing three wickets.

Now, we will briefly talk about some important reasons for MI’s defeat in this game.

Weak responses from middle-order batting

The MI openers Suryakumar Yadav and Evin Lewis provided a brilliant start as they put an important 87-run partnership for the opening wicket. But after the opening partnership was broken, the hosts lost their momentum as the next batsmen failed to utilise that excellent start.

Apart from the openers, Hardik Pandya (36 runs off 21 balls) was the only other MI batsman to reach the 20-run mark but that was not enough to create a good total on the board. Other batsmen responded very poorly and that forced the hosts to put a fighting total only instead of a big total.