IPL 2025 | Two losses typical of MI; they are on right track to win title: Sanjay Manjrekar’s audacious claims

Two losses in two games was hardly anything to be alarmed about and in fact typical of Mumbai Indians starts, according to Sanjay Manjrekar. He was speaking exclusively on Kuhl Fans Match Centre Live on JioHotstar, and said the start of the match had been a downer, but not particularly relevant to title hopes.
 “Mumbai Indians didn’t look in the race when they lost two wickets for 35. In comparison, Gujarat Titans had around 129 runs for their first two wickets. After that, it seemed like Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav were trying to build a partnership. The challenge with building a partnership in a chase of over 190 is that the required run rate starts to suffer, and that’s exactly what happened. In the end, you have to say that Gujarat Titans batted better—I thought they got maybe 15 to 20 runs over par,” Manjrekar said. “The dew never came in, which made Mumbai’s job even more difficult,” he added.
But he remained gung ho about their championship aspirations after a few dire seasons. “But despite all that, two losses are quite typical for Mumbai Indians. They still seem to be on the right track to go on and win the title,” Manjrekar added.
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Manjrekar was blunt about Rohit Sharma’s batting struggles, and said the risk of this stage of his career was things slipping away from the T20 World Cup winning captain. “Rohit Sharma is clearly going through a phase. He’s not the Rohit Sharma of, say, three to four years ago. He’s at a stage in his career where he has to push himself every morning—train hard and be at his best—because things are slipping away for him. He’s still relying on his natural talent and instincts,” Manjrekar said.
He also reckoned Ryan Rickleton could take time to settle in. “Ryan Rickelton, being a South African, will take time to adjust to Indian pitches. Very few South African batters, barring AB de Villiers and Heinrich Klaasen, have truly flourished on Indian pitches. So, we’ll have to give him time.”
Manjrekar added that he wasn’t very convinced with the MI lineup, adding most batters need helpful conditions. “Apart from that, Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav, along with Robin Minz and some of the other players, form the batting line-up. However, to me, it still looks a little unconvincing. And a lot of them rely on pitches where the ball comes onto the bat nicely. There’s pace and bounce, and even in that chase where they needed 12 or 13 runs, if it had been at Wankhede Stadium, they would have likely come very close to the target,” he candidly stated.