Rohit admits to Mumbai's relocation struggles

On the surface, Mumbai and Visakhapatnam have a couple of things in common - they are both port cities and have similar tropical climate. But, the slow and sticky pitches at the ACA-VDCA Stadium, Mumbai Indians' new home ground, are the antithesis of the Wankhede Stadium surface that's known for producing big totals.

Mumbai Indians had won two of their four home games at the Wankhede Stadium before IPL matches were moved out of Maharashtra. On the evidence of their two games in Visakhapatnam, they haven't taken the relocation well. Their batting let them down on both the occasions - they only managed totals of 92 and 124 against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab.

On Friday, Mumbai's failure to recalibrate their batting according to the conditions was best illustrated by two stats - a dot-ball percentage of 53, and only 54 runs scored through ones, twos and threes. Nitish Rana's 28-ball 25, which featured 16 dots and three sixes, was an example of that approach. His innings was an all-or-nothing tale of a sequence of dots followed by a six. That Mumbai's batsmen didn't recognise the relatively higher value of the single on a surface that didn't assist big hitting wasn't lost on the team's captain, Rohit Sharma.

"We all know how the Wankhede wicket plays - it's a good batting track and the ball comes on nicely," Rohit said. "But, when you play on these kinds of wickets where the ball is turning and stopping you've just got to rotate [the strike] as much as possible initially. If you don't, the pressure just keeps building."

Mumbai crawled to 21 for 2 for the lowest Powerplay score in IPL 2016. They had fared worse against Sunrisers, slipping to 32 for 5 in six overs. Rohit admitted his team was also hurt by a desire to dictate terms upfront which resulted in the wickets of Unmukt Chand and Ambati Rayudu in the Powerplay. They have now lost 19 wickets in their two games in Visakhapatnam.

"We thought we had to bat in the first six overs really well and put pressure on them," Rohit said. "That is why we went for shots and by doing that, we lost wickets.

"We all saw in the last three games that were played here, it is so difficult to get eight or nine an over in the end, because the wicket keeps getting slower and slower. So, it's important that you capitalise on the first six overs really well. In the middle overs, you just knock it around, get around six to seven runs and over, which we were not able to do today. We lost early wickets in the Powerplay.

"You've got to apply a little more on such wickets. We all know that in Mumbai you can catch up, in Bangalore you can catch up, but on a wicket like this, the first ten overs are pretty important."

Mumbai have also been rigid with their tactic of playing two overseas fast bowlers in Mitchell McClenaghan and Tim Southee at the expense of more batting muscle in the form of Martin Guptill or even an allrounder like Corey Anderson. While McClenaghan and Southee have been the enforcers with the ball, the side recognised they are slightly light on their batting and subsequently dropped Parthiv Patel and Hardik Pandya. With only two more games left - they play Delhi Daredevils on Sunday before flying to Kanpur to take on Gujarat Lions on May 21 - they have to act quickly and Rohit hinted at strengthening the batting through the inclusion of Guptill.

"It's something we can consider, playing three [overseas] batters," he said. "We know we've to win two out of two. Probably batting is something which has let us down in the last couple of games. Although we chased down in the last game [against Royal Challengers Bangalore], but that situation shouldn't have risen - in the last six overs, we needed about 68 runs. When you're chasing 152, you expect your top order to do most of the job.

"I don't believe that the whole pressure and run-scoring is on me. We've won games without me scoring as well. It's just that the whole batting squad needs to believe that whatever happens, we'll pull off a win."