IPL 2025: Mahela Jayawardene reveals the reason behind MI’s defeat to PBKS in Qualifier 2

Mumbai Indians suffered a five-wicket loss to the Punjab Kings in the second qualifier of the IPL 2025 season at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday, June 1, to bow out of the campaign.

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After the match, head coach Mahela Jayawardene attended the post-match press conference, revealing the reason behind his team’s defeat. He felt that Mumbai Indians losing Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma in quick succession ruined the game plan for them.

“I think we probably left a bit of runs on the park with the bat and we lost our way. Those back-to-back wickets probably slowed us down a little bit, but I still thought 200 was a good score in a qualifier,” Jayawardene said in the post-match press conference.

“The pressure picked up after those wickets as well up front and I think a few mistakes cost us. The execution wasn't up to what our standard is,” he added.

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“The wicket played pretty well in both innings. When we're batting first, after it's been in covers for a while, we need to assess the conditions a little bit… but I thought we started pretty well. We were very positive. We put them under pressure and we had two really good top-order partnerships,” he observed. 

“We were going at 140 at one stage scoring 10 runs an over and then those two back-to-back wickets probably slowed us down a little bit. I thought 200 was a decent score on this wicket on this ground. It's just that we didn't execute well.” said Mahela.

Moving into the details of the game, the Mumbai Indians batted first after losing the toss. However, MI went on to post a dominating total of 203/6 in 20 overs. Suryakumar Yadav (44) and Tilak Varma (44) were decent enough, scoring important runs in the middle overs. 

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In the chase, PBKS captain Shreyas Iyer (87* off 41 balls) smashed five fours and eight sixes to take his side over the line in 19 overs with five wickets in hand. He received good support from Josh Inglis (38) and Nehal Wadhera (48) in the powerplay and middle overs to seal the game.

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