IPL 2026: Eden Gardens pitch had spongy bounce, says Paras Mhambrey

After MI's defeat to KKR, bowling coach Paras Mhambrey called the Eden Gardens pitch unpredictable with 'spongy bounce'. He said losing four wickets in the powerplay put pressure on them and they were 20-25 runs short of a competitive total.

Mumbai Indians suffered yet another defeat in their IPL 2026 campaign on Wednesday, when Kolkata Knight Riders defeated them by four wickets at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. After the defeat, MI Bowling Coach Paras Mhambrey said the pitch at Eden Gardens had some spongy bounce, and it was unpredictable to judge the lengths.

'Not a normal Eden Gardens wicket'

Addressing the media at the post-match press conference, Mhambrey said, "It wasn't honestly that easy a wicket, not a normal Eden Gardens wicket. Had a spongy bounce over the period. If you see the first powerplay and then later on have a little bit of, you say it wasn't predictable. It was just a little bit up and down that made stroke making a little difficult.

He gave credit to KKR bowlers and accepted that they were 20-25 runs short of a fighting total. "Great credit to them that they bowled well to our batters. And when you lose four wickets in the powerplay, it's always going to be difficult to come back. There was a lot of pressure on the batters as well to construct a partnership. You're going to have some doubt balls out there. But I still feel that if you look at the surface, the way we were batting, I still feel if we had got a partnership, we were some 20-25 runs short on this wicket. We still would have managed 160, and that would have been really competitive," said Mhambrey.

Match Summary

Coming to the match, KKR opted to bowl first after winning the toss. It was a scorching cameo of 32* in 18 balls, with three fours and two sixes from Corbin Bosch, which took MI to 147/8 in 20 overs, with Saurabh Dubey, Kartik Tyagi and Cameron Green picking up two wickets each.

In the chase, Manish and Rovman Powell (40 in 30 balls, with four boundaries and two sixes) top-scored as KKR chased the target in 18.5 overs with four wickets left.

With this win, their sixth in the previous seven games, KKR keep their playoff dream alive and kicking. With six wins and losses each and a no result, KKR are in sixth place in the points table. While MI is at the ninth spot with four wins and nine losses. MI will face the Rajasthan Royals in their final game of the season at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday. RR desperately need a win to stay alive in the race for the playoffs, whereas MI are already eliminated.

On final game against RR

Talking about the RR game, Mhambrey said, "Our preparation is simple; it's going to look at winning the games. That's what we've been doing. We've been focusing on this game as well, and earlier games as well, are winning games. And we're going to look back and say, how do we work around, construct a team around, what are the things that we need to learn from this game and take it to the next game, which allows us to win a game."

"So for us, the focus has always been, how do we win games? I know with the way things have balanced out, the win like this would have had a cat amongst the pigeons. But we can only control what we can control. And we can control it going out there, playing quality 40 overs of cricket and winning the game and leave the results or the positions in the table for someone else to look into," he concluded. (ANI)

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