After the Mumbai Indians’ terrible IPL 2026 campaign ended with yet another loss, batting coach Kieron Pollard acknowledged that captain Hardik Pandya’s leadership tenure “has not gone as well” as either the player or the team would have liked.
After losing to Rajasthan Royals by 30 runs in their final league match in Mumbai on Sunday—their tenth loss in 14 games this season—the Pandya-led squad finished a dismal ninth in the 10-team points standings.
“From a leadership perspective on Hardik, yes, it has not gone as well as he would have wanted as an individual. It might not have gone how we would have wanted as a management staff. But one thing you (should) know that we have tried each and everything to give him the best opportunity to lead the franchise, to do well,” PTI quoted Pollard telling reporters after the match.
According to Pollard, the Mumbai Indians group failed as a whole.
“No one is going to sit here and put blame on point fingers. When you lose, especially, you have to look at it from a collective perspective. You win some, you lose some. But, at the end of the day, I wouldn’t question certain things,” he said.
“He (Pandya) was trying; we all were trying, and it just didn’t work out for us. You sit, you talk, (and) see what is (for the) best. Never know what is going to happen. For us, let us just lick our wounds in (this) time and hopefully come back stronger in the 12 months,” Pollard said.
Pollard stated that the Mumbai Indians won’t be making any changes right away, but he acknowledged that some things need to be reexamined after the team finished ninth after coming third in the 2025 tournament.
He responded, “Right now, is not the time and place to talk about that,” when asked if MI needed a restart given the number of veteran players on the team.
“All these things would be sort of emotional decisions and thinking of every aspect of what is needed, everyone needs that time and space to go sit down, recollect, have a fair assessment as to where everything actually went wrong for us.”
“That is where better decision-making is going to come about. If you sit here right now and say you need to do this, you need to do that, that would be irresponsible from a management perspective,” he added.
The “smarter option” was to rest Jasprit Bumrah from Sunday’s match, according to Pollard.
“Jasprit is an individual who wears his heart on his sleeve and when you look at this match today, you’re going to get two points if you play (well). Then what’s that going to do for us if we finish on a win, finish on a high?,” Pollard said.
“Sometimes, you need to understand the player, understand what is necessary at this point in time. From a selection perspective, we didn’t know that today would have been right for him to play with the other guys on the bench.”
“We have depth and we are building young guys, so trying something different. I don’t see anything wrong with that from our perspective.”
Pollard continued, “Let’s not look too much into that. It’s the last game of the season. It’s not that we could have qualified as well, and he is a prized possession for Indian cricket. Sometimes you have to take the smarter option.”
The former all-rounder claimed that because the five-time winners were poor all season, it was a season of what-ifs.
“It has been a season of what-ifs and overall disappointing for all of us. Everyone would have felt the same way. There’s no hiding from that. We weren’t good throughout the entire tournament,” he said.
“We weren’t able to string together wins and use the momentum when we got it. At the end of it, when you look at it rationally, we got the position that we deserved in terms of the type of cricket that we played throughout the tournament,” Pollard added.
