“He is quality player, led from the front”: MI head coach Mark Boucher lauds Rohit’s captaincy

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], May 27 (ANI): Mumbai Indians head coach Mark Boucher feels that team skipper Rohit Sharma has played a key role in the team’s journey in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 season even though he did not get many runs with the bat.

Rohit made 332 runs in 16 innings with just two half-centuries and had a strike rate of 132.80.
“Rohit is a quality player. He led from the front with regards to driving a way we wanted to play,” Boucher said in the post-match conference on Friday, according to ESPNcricinfo.

Even though Rohit failed to live up to the expectations with his bat, the rest of the MI batters performed collectively well to keep MI in the race for the trophy. On multiple occasions, they managed to chase down the 200-plus target with balls to spare.

“Our batting this season was fantastic. We went out at the beginning of the season, looked at a couple of stats and felt that we could improve in certain phases of the game, and the captain is the best person to go out there and try and drive that vision. If you have a look at how we did in the powerplay and from 7-10, we really upped the scoring rate and played a positive brand of cricket that will stand us in good stead for the future. The guys will take a lot of confidence from that,” Boucher added.

MI missed the presence of their quality pace bowlers like Jasprit Bumrah. Jofra Archer could not be with the team for the entire season due to injury.

Boucher praised the bowling unit also.

“The bowlers, I think you have to look at it from a different perspective. If you have a look at the totals that were scored at Wankhede and chased down, sometimes you can look at the figures and say our bowlers were going for a lot of runs. And yes, there were certain games where we could have bowled a little bit better. We’ve got quite an inexperienced bowling line-up. But we had some good chats and I think we improved as the competition went along.”

MI’s campaign came to an end after their 62-run loss against Gujarat Titans in the IPL 2023 qualifier. GT put 223 runs on the board in the first innings and the MI folded up at 171 with their batting succumbing to run-rate pressure towards the end.