Sachin, you call that captaincy!

Sachin Tendulkar tried to make up for some stupid captaincy with yet another excellent batting display, but you can't always make up for the kinds of error you are not expected to make after having been in the business for 20 years.

Ryan McLaren sent down a perfectly good first over against the Lions, giving away just four runs, considering another four came off leg byes. Yet for some odd reason best known to the skipper he took the man off the attack and had four separate bowlers send down the next four overs from that end - Zaheer Khan, Lasith Malinga, Harbhajan Singh and surprisingly even JP Duminy.

Mumbai were playing five full-time bowlers and one really couldn't understand why Duminy had to be employed within the first 10 overs of an innings that was yet to get to a free-flowing stage considering the Lions were struggling at 39 for two after six overs. Duminy's over opened the floodgates as man of the match Jonathan Vandiar dispatched him with utter disdain and then along with Neil McKenzie set up a challenging total for the visitors.

Tendulkar's decision not to use McLaren's remaining three overs was further confounded when he failed to utilise the fourth over from Hrabhajan Singh, who went for 22 runs from his three overs. On the other hand, the pacers barring Malinga sent down one wayward delivery after another.

Zaheer looked completely out of sorts giving away 45 runs from his four overs, including 17 in his last over that virtually took the game away from the Mumbai Indians, while Kieron Pollard's two overs cost 21 runs.

The fielders too seemed to be affected by a paralysis as they too chipped in with overthrows and misfields. Ones became twos, twos became threes and even boundaries were given away generously. A whopping 57 runs came off the final five overs and that in the end proved to be the nail in Mumbai's coffin.

Clearly, Mumbai had no strategy in place and that was best highlighted when McLaren went for a single off the second last delivery of the game, when the team actually needed 12 off two deliveries to take the game into the super over.

When Mumbai took the field minus Dwayne Bravo and Saurabh Tiwary, it seemed like a brave decision, but in the end the IPL runners-up made it look foolhardy because of their sloppiness.