Rohit Sharma blames poor bowling and fielding for loss to RCB

Rohit Sharma dropped Chris Gayle’s catch

Mumbai, May 11 (IANS) Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma blamed his side's poor bowling and sloppy fielding for their loss to Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League (IPL) encounter here on Sunday.

Against RCB's challenging 235/1 in 20 overs, powered by A.B. de Villiers' 59-ball 133, the home side only managed 196/7, losing the game by 39 runs.

"It becomes difficult if bowlers fail to take wickets. Our fielding was also not up to the mark today. It's not at all a good sign to drop catches at crucial moments of the game, which made things easy for the batsmen.

"In the first six overs, we bowled well. But from seven to 15 overs, they scored over 100 runs. We needed to pick a wicket at that phase. But we failed and that helped them to pile on a big score," Rohit said at the post-match press conference.

The skipper praised de Villiers and Virat Kohli for putting up a match-winning partnership.

"Credit goes to both de Villiers and Kohli for their great batting display. Specially for AB who played a very good innings. We failed to pick wickets and that helped them to score runs freely," he said.

Rohit himself and Harbhajan Singh dropped Chris Gayle and Kohli respectively on successive balls at the start of RCB's innings.

Speaking about the dropped catches, Rohit said: "They (RCB) heavily rely on the top three batsman. Unfortunately, we dropped those catches. Nobody wants to drop catches. It wasn't our day on the field particularly. We did pretty well with the bat as we got 196. But our fielding has been good throughout the tournament."

With two games to go for Mumbai, they must win both the games against Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad to ensure a place in the play-offs.

"We have to win both the games. We don't want to be in a position where we have to sit and think about the run rate and other things. We want to win and want to qualify comfortably. So we exactly know our situation at the moment and we want to win all games coming up. We next play Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad," he said.