Former India opener Virender Sehwag slammed Mumbai Indians’ (MI) batting duo Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav for taking too long to get set and then giving their wicket away without making any significant contribution in the IPL 2024 match against Kolkata Knight Riders. In a rain affected encounter which was reduced to a 16 over game between the two historical powerhouses of the IPL on Saturday, Rohit scored 19 off 24 while managed to record 11 off 14 after MI started their chase of 158 strongly with Ishan Kishan giving the side a good start with his 40 off 22 balls.

“Whoever bowls good, just play him out. If two wickets hadn’t fallen, Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav could’ve finished the match an over before. Vaibhav Arora, Mitchell Starc, Andre Russell and Harshit Rana had to ball anyway; if they played out the spinners and didn’t lose the wickets, they would’ve won the game. You can’t have an ego when you come out to bat. You play them out or punish the loose deliveries,” Sehwag said on Cricbuzz.

Two early wickets in the first innings saw the KKR struggle early in the game. The Mumbai bowling attack faltered as the game went on with Venkatesh Iyer being the main man with the bat. Nitish Rana, Andre Russell, Rinku Singh & Ramandeep Singh all provided small yet explosive contributions to take Kolkata’s score to 157/7.

In response, Tilak Varma’s 32 runs off 17 balls went in vain as there were no real contributions by the middle order with Hardik Pandya, Tim David and Nehal Wadhera all combining for five runs. Naman Dhir’s 17 runs off 6 balls gave the fans a glimmer of hope but it was not enough as MI only managed to score 139 in the chase.

“Naman Dhir came right at the end and smashed two sixes and a four; if Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav were set at that time, they would’ve hit 5 balls for boundaries. You could be Rohit Sharma or Suryakumar Yadav, but at least respect the delivery if you can’t respect the bowler. The ball on which Rohit Sharma got out wasn’t a weak ball. No doubt Rohit and Suryakumar are great players, but that doesn’t mean you should hit the good deliveries, too,” concluded Sehwag.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)