Hardik Pandya Slams Mumbai Indians Bowlers After Loss Against Rajasthan Royals, Delivers Brutal Verdict

Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya said that his bowlers needed to step up and take more responsibility following a 27-run loss to Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2026 on Tuesday. RR openers Yashasvi Jaiswal and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi were in devastating form, taking the MI bowlers to the cleaners. In an 11-over-a-side match, Jaiswal top-scored with an unbeaten 77 as RR posted a massive total of 150/3. In response, MI managed only 123/9, suffering their second consecutive defeat. Hardik made it clear that the batters were not at fault, adding that the bowlers failed to execute their plans.

"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 couple of right balls. If you look at the 27-run margin, we are talking about five good balls and five fewer sixes. If we had executed the right deliveries, we would have been in the game," Hardik said after the match.

"But as I said, their openers threw us out of the game in the first couple of overs. After that, we were catching up throughout the innings and ultimately fell short," he added.

Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult, Shardul Thakur, and Deepak Chahar were all expensive, taking just one wicket between them. With the exception of Hardik, none of them maintained an economy rate under 10. Hardik doubled down on his criticism, stating that as a bowling group, MI were not "up to the mark."

"We didn't execute the deliveries we were supposed to. They played well, but 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.

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