Former India batter turned commentator Aakash Chopra has questioned the bowling and captaincy in the IPL 2026 match between the Mumbai Indians (MI) and the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). He added that MI conceded 220 runs despite having their speedster Jasprit Bumrah in their bowling attack as well.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel, ‘Aakash Chopra,’ he said, “Bowlers, are you there? It’s not like teams have weak bowling or don’t have bowlers available. I can understand that it was an issue with RCB and SRH, but it wasn’t the case with Mumbai. Mumbai have Jasprit Bumrah. Jasprit Bumrah is in your team and you still conceded 220, and it’s the IPL, not a World Cup game. I mean, what is happening?”
“The captaincy is also being seen a little. Only two bowlers bowled back-to-back overs. One was Hardik Pandya himself and the other was Jasprit Bumrah. I am talking about the Mumbai bowling innings. He bowled Trent Boult in four different spells. He is a new-ball bowler. He was made to bowl just one over, and he was stopped after that. I am wondering about the way the bowlers are being rotated, where you are not giving anyone continuous overs. In fact, even a single run wasn’t scored on the off side in the first five overs. We tend to overthink the issue many times,” he further added.
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In the same video, Aakash Chopra also questioned Ajinkya Rahane for not bowling veteran spinner Sunil Narine in the powerplay overs against the Mumbai Indians.
“Ultimately, 220 runs were conceded and they were chased easily as well. Here I will talk about Ajinkya Rahane. You didn’t bring Narine in the powerplay. Your bowling is already weak, and then you were bowling short balls to Rohit Sharma,” he said.
“You won’t be able to escape by bowling short balls to Rohit Sharma. Then Sunil Narine bowled only three overs. He was called to bowl the 19th over when the match was already over. Are we actually watching the same game? So many runs were being scored and you didn’t want someone to bowl more,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
