Mumbai Indians coach Mahela Jayawardene attended the press conference of the season, as the five-time champions were officially eliminated from the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 playoffs race on Sunday as well. MI posted a challenging total of 166/7 on a tricky wicket, but RCB reached the target on the final ball of the match.
“The season is disappointing. We’ve had our opportunities, but we were not good enough. We were not consistent enough with the ball or the bat, and that showed in the margins. We were probably two or three wins away from being in the same group of contenders to get into the playoffs, but we didn’t get those wins, and today was another classic example where we fell short,” he said.
“It’s difficult for me to sum up a season right now; I have to give it some thought and figure out exactly what happened. But yeah, we were not good enough with our skills and execution this season,” he further added.
However, it isn’t like the Mumbai Indians to shuffle their squad every other game, but this campaign also saw constant changing as well. Meanwhile, Jayawardene also explained that most changes were forced.
“I don’t think it was chopping and changing. What probably you guys didn’t know is that we had a lot of injuries and a lot of niggles-guys getting injured or being unavailable. So, those were mostly forced changes. Tactically, we would have changed very few during the season. I would have loved to have our main core guys consistently out there. But there are no excuses. I think we had a quality squad. It’s just that we had to put our hands up and say that we were not good enough overall. We just need to continue to play good cricket. The message to the boys is to continue to do that,” he said.
While captain Hardik Pandya’s absence from the game was named as a ‘back spasm’ issue, several players were backed by the management despite a poor run of form as well.
“I don’t think it is,” Mahela Jayawardene said when asked if it became a “political decision” to bench out-of-form senior players. “When you know the quality, you know they’re also trying to do their best. If I knew it was something to do with a lack of effort, I would have spoken to them, but the commitment and the effort they’re putting in is unbelievable. With Ro getting injured and coming back to bat the way he did-all that sums it up. The core group is quite valuable for us; you can’t just keep changing. We went with the trust and the confidence that we had in them. There was no reason for us to sideline them because they just came from a World Cup, and they had a really good World Cup, winning it and all that. As a unit, we haven’t been good enough.”
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