Lisa Keightley on Mumbai’s unpredictable WPL season as she concedes there were a lot of moving parts this year.
The Mumbai Indians (MI) have had a disappointing WPL 2026 thus far, according to head coach Lisa Keightley, who took over for Charlotte Edwards after three seasons of qualifying for the finals and winning twice, because the batters are under pressure and aren’t always able to handle it.
With Hayley Matthews and G Kamalini as a reliable opening pair, MI had a well-defined strategy going into the competition. Before the season had started, Matthews sustained a quad injury during training, which led to an instant reorganisation.
When Kamalini’s finger injury kept her out of the competition, the disturbance got worse. After eight games, MI had switched up their starting lineups four times, never quite achieving the consistency that had allowed them to be so successful for three seasons.
“Injuries and sickness to two of our key players was tough,” Keightley said after their fifth loss of the season, the latest also a first, against Gujarat Giants (GG) on Friday. “We had to find combinations and probably do a few things a little bit different. We’ve probably struggled to get that momentum into our season and obviously being put under pressure early and losing matches was not ideal. We just couldn’t get those combinations and partnerships to get the momentum going within our tournament, which is disappointing.”
Barring the one half-century, against RCB, Matthews has struggled too, much like Amelia Kerr, their other overseas opening option. “It’s tough when you’re missing a world-class opening batter. It’s hard to replace. I don’t think it’s been any different for MI from the first three years to this year,” Keightley said. “The key players are key players in most teams.
“And it’s just how you build your squad around that and the domestic players step up. We just had a lot of moving parts, like Sajana, to be totally honest. We picked her to bat at six and she started the tournament fantastically and did the role so well. And it was just unfortunate we had to make a few adjustments after Kamalini’s gone home.
“But to her [Sajana’s] credit, she was really keen to try and go out there and do the best for the team. It’s not easy going out facing world-class bowlers in this competition. She was really doing team first and trying to do the best for the team and get the job done as well as she could.
herself the best chance. So it was nice for her to get some runs today. If she could have gone a little bit longer, I thought it would have been a really good reward for all the hard work that she’s done over the last couple of weeks.”