Hardik Pandya pins the blame on bowlers for loss against Rajasthan Royals, tells them to take ‘more responsibility’

Yashasvi Jaiswal and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi brought their best to the 11-overs-a-side contest against the Mumbai Indians as the Rajasthan Royals registered a comprehensive 27-run win in an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 fixture at the Barsapara Stadium on Wednesday. Jaiswal and Sooryavanshi played knocks of 77* and 39 as Rajasthan posted 150/3 in 11 overs, and the total proved enough for the Royals as Mumbai eventually fell 27 runs short after being reduced to 123/9. With this loss, the Mumbai Indians faced a second defeat in a row, and as expected, skipper Hardik Pandya wasn’t pleased with the effort.

The Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik pinpointed the areas of concern, saying the bowlers need to step up and take some more responsibility. He also said that the batters of his team cannot be faulted, as they had a steep target to chase and had to go for their shots from ball number one.

“I would not put this game on the batting. This was definitely the bowling unit which had to take responsibility. It’s T20 cricket. It’s always about bowling those right couple of balls. And if you see 27 (margin of defeat), that means we are talking about 5 good balls and 5 fewer sixes. So if we had executed the right balls, we would have been in the game,” Hardik said after the match.

The match between Mumbai and Rajasthan saw Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar and Trent Boult all leak runs, and it was no surprise to see Hardik have a stern word for his bowlers, asking them to pull up their socks.

“We didn’t execute the deliveries which we were supposed to. They played well. I think our bowlers need to take responsibility. As a bowling group, we were not at all up to the mark. And they played tremendous cricket,” said Pandya.

Sooryavanshi and Jaiswal started to hammer the Mumbai bowlers all around the park, and neither of the two was willing to take a backward step. The 15-year-old smashed Jasprit Bumrah for a six off the very first ball he faced off him. Eventually, Sooryavanshi lost his wicket to Shardul, but Jaiswal remained unbeaten on 77 to take the Royals to 150/3.

Mumbai Indians were never in with a chance of chasing the total down as the five-time champions lost Ryan Rickelton, Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma, Hardik and Tilak Varma in the first five overs. In the end, Rajasthan registered a comprehensive 27-run win to make it three wins in a row and move to the top of the points table. On the other hand, Mumbai have now lost two out of their three opening matches.