Hardik, Santner not completing their overs 'an opportunity missed' for MI

In the end, Mumbai Indians' (MI) 203 was not even enough to take the Punjab Kings (PBKS) chase into the last over. And that could well have been because of a couple of errors in judgment on the part of Hardik Pandya and the MI think tank in crunch moments in the IPL 2025 Qualifier 2. Why didn't Hardik himself bowl more than the two overs he did? Why did Mitchell Santner bowl just two overs? Why did Reece Topley bowl the 13th over?

All this is in hindsight, of course, and while Santner being kept away because spin-destroyer Shreyas Iyer was batting might make sense, Hardik not bowling after the tenth was a puzzle.

"First of all, Hardik, Santner and [Jasprit] Bumrah were going to be the three main bowlers, who had to bowl 12 overs together," Varun Aaron said on ESPNcricinfo's Time Out show. "But Hardik and Santner have just bowled two overs each. I don't know why Hardik didn't bowl four overs in this game. This wicket, he has bowled so much on this wicket playing for GT, he had to bowl four overs."

Hardik bowled the eighth over, giving away just two runs and picking up the wicket of the big-hitting Josh Inglis. The tenth went for 17. Nothing Hardik bowled was further up than a length, and five of the 12 balls he bowled were pace-off. He seemed to be doing the right things even if Iyer and Nehal Wadhera got runs off him in that second over.

"He looked very difficult to get away, especially in his first over," Aaron said. "Yeah, he went for a few in his second, but he should have still persevered because his plans were right, and he executed them really well: back of length, bouncers, slower bouncers..."

Tom Moody, Aaron's fellow panelist, felt that Trent Boult dropping Wadhera off the last ball of what turned out to be Hardik's spell might have forced a change of plan.

"Hardik should have had a two-for. That second over, that catch that you'd expect Trent Boult to take 99 times out of 100. He fresh-aired it. Not even a firm glove on it," Moody said. "He should have bowled. He was executing what was required on that surface. And that was an opportunity that was missed. He should have had a two-for, and I agree, he should have come back and grabbed the bull by the horns, and said, 'right, okay, I'm going to bowl in here'."

If Hardik had bowled more, Topley, playing his first game of the season after two months of bowling in the nets, might not have come on for a third over - the 13th - and been carted for 19 runs, mainly by Iyer.

"Topley looked like a bowler that was conditioned for nets but way off the mark for real, high-pressure, competitive cricket," Moody said. "That's what he was missing. It's very hard to come from being on top of your game, feeling you've got rhythm, bowling good areas in the nets, to suddenly transferring that to a pressure-game situation."

It might have been the over that turned the game, Iyer's hat-trick of sixes bringing the required run rate from 11.87 after the 12th to 10.85 after the 13th.

Santner finished a high-scoring IPL 2025 with an economy rate of 7.92. On Sunday night, his two overs went for 15 runs. He didn't bowl anymore. Iyer is a great hitter of spin and Wadhera, the other batter for a large part of the chase - they added 84 for the fourth wicket - is a left-hand batter, making it an unfavourable match-up for Santner. But still...

"I mean, you can look at it in different ways. I think Hardik looked at it because we knew that there were a couple of match-ups against Nehal and he didn't want to get the game away from him," Mahela Jayawardene, the MI head coach, said at the press conference after the game. "Then after that just the game went away from him because they had those two big overs [the 14th, from Boult, went for 14 runs]. After that he was a bit hesitant to bring Mitch back again.

"There's lots of ifs and buts - we could have done this, we could have done that - but I think when we executed those things in the past, it has worked for us and gone our way and today it didn't. So I think the game is such that you have to make some decisions and sometimes it goes, sometimes it doesn't, so we will reflect on that, have a debrief."

It wasn't just Wadhera. Iyer was perceived as a danger for Santner too, Moody suggested.

"[Hardik] needed to back Santner. I felt that he didn't back Santner because of Shreyas' presence at the crease. Because he is such a good player of spin, [Hardik] felt that Shreyas may take to him," Moody said. "But I'd be backing the bowler. Santner is a very crafty bowler. International pedigree. He's been there and done that in those moments. Back him!"