Head coach Mahela Jayawardene stated that although the Mumbai Indians have a history of coming back into the tournament from the verge, they lacked both individual skill and teamwork throughout the 2026 IPL season.
Despite possessing four players of India’s T20 World Cup winning side, including captain Suryakumar Yadav, the five-time IPL champions Mumbai Indians were among the first teams eliminated from the playoff race this year.
MI had a good number of Indian players, including Jasprit Bumrah (4 wickets), Hardik Pandya (172 runs, 4 wickets), Suryakumar (210), and Tilak Varma (356). According to Jayawardene, MI’s lackluster performance this year cannot be attributed to only these four individuals.
“It’s not fair just to bring up (only) those four guys. As a group, a lot of the guys haven’t been able to consistently perform — that’s how I see it,” PTI quoted Jayawardene telling reporters on eve of their last match in IPL 2026 against Rajasthan Royals in Mumbai.
“Yes, they came from a very high level (of competition) in the World Cup and all that. (But) what you have to understand is that how you play for your national team and how you play for the IPL franchise, sometimes it is different because the personnel is different.”
“The roles can be different, how you want to go about, so they had to switch up and there’s nothing wrong with the effort that they put off the field training-wise and what they needed to do, and the conversations that we had with them,” he added.
Jayawardene continued, “It’s just that they were not able to go out there in the middle and execute. That is something that happens in a game of cricket and that’s something we also need to understand.”
According to Jayawardene, a number of additional circumstances combined to prevent MI from making the playoffs.
“I can’t just say one thing affected, but it’s a combination of a lot of things. We needed a lot of the other players and the entire squad to be in a very positive frame of mind, performing at least for seven, eight games,” he said.
“In the past, we had individual players winning matches by themselves and we haven’t had that happening this year with the prominent players we had. That can happen.”
“And so that means that collectively the team has to then perform to win some matches, and that also did not happen because a lot of the players did not perform to our expectations. We tried some youngsters also, but they also struggled in the heat of the moment. It’s that sort of a season and that’s something that we have to reflect on,” Jayawardene said.
Rohit Sharma is 100% fit, according to the head coach of the Mumbai Indians, but he is being deployed as an impact substitute because of team combination considerations. The former skipper was selected for the three-match ODI series between India and Afghanistan, but his availability is contingent on his level of fitness.
“He had a hamstring injury, (and) we gave him the time that he needed to recover from that. The first game or so, we were cautious. Even with his batting, the way he was running, because he had to adapt slowly, gradually coming back into it,” Jayawardene said.
“But for me, with the medical team, everything is 100 per cent. We’re not putting him on the field because of what we’ve done in the past as well — it’s just the team combination. It has nothing to do with it, and I hope that it doesn’t impact whatever the conversations or whatever is happening outside this bubble,” Jayawardene added.
The Sri Lankan claimed that Pandya’s expression of annoyance at a missed opportunity in their prior game was a reflection of the circumstances.
“It is hard not just for Hardik, but for all of us to go through a season where we know that we had the talent, we had the squad, but we were not able to execute and perform to the best of our ability,” Jayawardene said.
