After the loss against Team Mohali, the Little Maestro Sachin Tendulkar loses his cool. It's just that only those in the dressing room felt the heat of his anger.
Tendulkar wasn't just dismayed by his teammates who messed up a super chance to inch closer to the IPL semifinal spot; he was cheesed off by the decisions of the third umpire Suresh Shastri, who according to the Mumbai Indians "goofed-up big time".
There seems to be something fishy, how can he be targeting us all the time. Most of his run-out calls today were ridiculous,’’ said a member of the team management.
Tendulkar himself chose to be diplomatic. "ICC regulations do not allow us to comment but yes, everyone has seen how the decisions (third umpire's) went. Obviously it does hurt when such things happen but the whole world has seen the decisions and the whole world has watched which way they went.
"I'm not trying to indicate anything to anyone but had the run-outs not happened we would've got those extra runs and won," said Tendullkar at the post-match conference.
When asked if he will take up the matter with the authorities, he said, "We'll leave it to the team management if they want to do anything about it."
According to team sources, Mumbai Indians felt that they had been done-in in three of the four run-outs, including the one where Luke Pomersbach was given the benefit of doubt despite a throw from the deep hitting the stumps direct.
The second big error, according to the team, was when Piyush Chawla failed to ripoff the bails in his first attempt to run out Dwayne Smith. "We were shocked to see the screen flashing 'Run Out'. In fact, we initially thought it was by mistake," said the source.
About the mix-up with Robin Uthappa which ended in his own run-out, Tendulkar termed it as wrong judgement. "Sometimes judgement does go wrong. Batsman calls for a run but you can't hear because there's a lot of noise from the crowd. It happens. In fact, I had asked Robin to play out that ball for it was Irfan Pathan's last ball of the over and after that the game would change. But there was a mixup and Irfan did a good job to hit the stumps."
Of all things the erroneous calls of umpire Shastri made the players tear their hair in disgust in the dressing room. "It was the same umpire who refused to call a bouncer even when a bowler bowled four consecutive ones against us in our game against Delhi Daredevils," recalled a senior team management member.
Inspite of Sachin Tendullar hitting 65, Mumbai Indians lost by one run in an absolute thriller to Team Mohali in their their last home game at the Wankhede Stadium.
Flying machine : There are many things that have come and gone in the Indian Premier League but the sight of Yuvraj Singh diving full length a la Jonty Rhodes to run out VS Yeligati off the last ball of the match is one that will stay in the consciousness for a long time.
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