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'Bowled A Lot Of Soft Balls,' Hardik Pandya Dissatisfied Despite Narrow Save Vs PBKS

MI seal a nine-run thriller vs PBKS in IPL 2024 (X.com)MI seal a nine-run thriller vs PBKS in IPL 2024 (X.com)

Mumbai Indians (MI) captain Hardik Pandya called for improvement in death bowling after MI survived a narrow scare against Punjab Kings (PBKS to secure a nine-run thrilling victory on Thursday night. 

An inexperienced uncapped player Ashutosh Sharma nearly defeated a heavyweight Mumbai Indians lineup with remarkable fearless hitting before lack of support cost PBKS the game.

Punjab kicked off the 193-run chase on a horrific note courtesy of an unwarranted collapse from the top order. However, Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma once again led PBKS’s counterattack but fell short of nine runs.

Pandya admitted that IPL has a tendency to produce close games like this and therefore MI never took the opposition lightly. 

"I mean it's natural that you think that you are ahead in the game but at the same time you know IPL has this tendency of producing games like this, where the opposition can come back into the game any time," he said.

He further credited Ashutosh Sharma’s unbelievable innings, and his fearless hitting left him in awe.

"Ashutosh was unbelievable I mean coming in and playing like that and hitting almost every ball from the middle of the bat. He knew the fact what he wanted to do, I am really happy for him," Pandya said.

Despite the narrow win, Hardik Pandya called for improvement in death bowling as he felt the bowler allowed unwanted softballs.

"We mentioned in the timeout that it doesn't matter how good we look. It's just that we keep scraping and we keep fighting in the game. Yeah, there are quite a few areas, like in the bowling we need to stop bowling soft bowls, yeah batters played really well but we bowled a lot of soft balls that led the game to go deep. Nevertheless in the end win is a win," he concluded.

Regardless, Hardik Pandya was elated to grab crucial two points to move up to the seventh spot on points table.