'Hardik batting at 7 was a collective decision, not his alone': Pollard

Mumbai Indians batting coach Kieron Pollard backed Hardik Pandyas move to open the bowling instead of Jasprit Bumrah and also said the skipper batting at number seven in their IPL 2024 opener against Gujarat Titans was a collective decisionAn inexplicable batting strategy saw MI lose their opener by six runs here on Sunday after they looked on course for victoryMumbai Indians won the toss and opted to bowl first and surprisingly Hardik opened the bowling against his former sideYou have to plan and decide what you want to do as a team Hardik Pandya has also bowled with the new ball for Gujarat over the last couple of years He swung the new ball and bowled it well which was nothing new to us We tried to use the advantage of the new ball swinging along When I look at the decision made there is nothing wrong with it and we move on Pollard said at the postmatch press conferenceWhen the discussion turned to the logic behind Hardik coming in to bat at number seven Pollard said one cant attribute the decision to the skipperNo decision is made on full autonomy so we cant say it is his decision As a team we have plans we talk about setting entry points for batters The top order batted deep into the game and we also had two power hitters to go in the back end Usually if you look at it over time Tim David has finished games for us and Hardik has done it over the years So at any point any one of them can resurrect the situation It didnt happen tonight so there will likely be a chat about who should have gone earlier But all of those things are in hindsight and as a team we make decisions so lets put a stop to Hardik made a decision Hardik did this Hardik did that We are a team We make decisions collectively as one the West Indian saidAlso ReadDid not look like Shubman was leading for first time Sai KishorePollard also threw his weight behind embattled opener Ishan Kishan and said he will come good in the coming matches as he is an experienced player within the setupFor him again he did not score tonight so we can look at all sorts of different things but I said its a long tournament he is an experienced guy within our setup and we expect big things from Ishan He is in a good space he has been practising well and has been doing fairly decently so hopefully within the next couple of games you can see great performances from him and all of you will continue to laud his brains when he does that Pollard saidKishan was dismissed for a duck by Azmatullah Omarzai Four players including Punjab allrounder Naman Dhir made their Mumbai Indians debut in the teams opening fixture of IPL 2024Pollard was impressed with Dhirs performance Firstly kudos go to the scouts and all the guys who work behind the scenes and continue to unearth all of these talents He was on the radar For us he has been within our setup for the last couple of months going to England and developing So it was something that wed seen in that guy and he came out and was very expressiveAgain with the lofted shot we are excited about these things but I thought he had much more to offer His calmness even when we lost that first wicket and continuing with that intent is a good start for him But again this is merely the start of something At the end of it he scored 20odd runs Lets give him that space let him enjoy the momentWith agency inputs