You can’t choose your favourite moment, Rashid khan bowling or Hardik Pandya’s terrific batting displays? The defending champions’ bowling performance or the Mumbai’s impactful batting?
It happens, as this league has witnessed such panorama many times! What when these two sides collide on Wednesday!? Thriller, stunner, nail biting ending and you are free to brush your vocab for new adjectives!
The defending champions had started the tenth edition from where they left last season. Two stunning victories back to back, one against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the season opener followed by Gujarat Lions. Rashid Khan has moved from the fringes of world cricket into its glitziest tournament, confounding batsmen to set up victories for the defending champions in their first two matches. Rashid Khan’s biggest weapon is a disguised googly that left Gujarat Lions’ Brendon McCullum and Aaron Finch clueless, both trapped leg before in their nine-wicket-win.
Gujarat skipper, Suresh Raina too fell lbw, to a leg break for a change. Rashid took two top-order wickets in the 35-run win over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening game before claiming 3/19 against Gujarat Lions, on both occasions bowling in the Powerplay overs. They also outcasted both the teams in fielding and a balanced batting by the openers like Dhawan and Warner along with Henriques and Yuvraj to follow have led the camp to the perfect rise in the league!
On the other hand, the Mumbai Indians’ side had the another story. Rising Pune Supergiants defeated Mumbai by eight wickets and in the next match, Mumabi beat Kolkata Kight Riders by 4 wickets in an absolute thriller. Chasing a target of 179, MI lost wickets at regular intervals in the middle-overs but Nitish Rana and Hardik Pandya kept their cool and guided their team to a victory with a ball to spare. The Pandya brothers pulled off a heroic act. While the younger one smashed KKR bowlers, the elder one – Krunal – took three wickets. The asking rate was over 16 and at that moment it would have taken many brave men to back MI to get the job done. But it wasn’t until the 18th over that Rana really went after the bowling. He hammered a couple of sixes and a four off Boult’s penultimate over to take him for 19 runs and followed it with a six and four off Rajput to reach one of his most cherished half-centuries. But after he went, came Pandya to rescue! Pandya took six off the first two balls – Suryakumar Yadav misfielded to concede a four. Next ball, he aired one towards deep square leg but Rishi Dhawan couldn’t hold on to it. Three off two, Pandya swatted the ball towards the fine-leg fence to pull off a sensational chase.
PREVIOUS ENCOUNTERS:
Head-to-Head SRH and MI played 8 matches so far. MI won 4 and SRH 4 matches. SRH appeared in last four seasons of the IPL. So totally 8 matches have been played between these two teams. Winning ratio of both teams is exactly 50 percent. No team have any advantage on another team. Head-to-Head both the teams have 4 matches each.
RECENT FROM THIS SEASON:
Sunrisers Hyderabad had locked horns with Bangalore in their first match, emerging victorious registering a whopping 35 runs victory against the latter. The side led by Warner put up a massive total of 207 runs for the loss of 4 wickets. Shikhar Dhawan and Moises Henriques added 74 runs for the second wicket. Yuvraj Singh scored his fastest fifty in the game. Since then the sun never set on the camp, they swept another point down their line by registering a victory against the Gujarat lions with 27 balls remaining.
SRH won the toss and opted to bowl. Gujarat Lions could only score 135/7 after Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan took 3/19. SRH captain David Warner (76*) and Moises Henriques (52*) scored the fifties in an unbeaten 108-run partnership.
Mumbai Indians tasted loss on their first encounter, losing by eight wickets to Pune whereas the side led by Rohit Sharma made a dream comeback in the next match against Kolkata with a commendable 4 wickets win! This was the first instance where a player took a catch off his brother’s bowling in the IPL.Being the only brother duo who plays for the same franchise! Both of them set some unique records!
Talking Points:
It is in the news that Mustafizur Rahman may join the SRH camp soon which may make their bowling more destructive. Lots of eyes would again follow the star spinner Rashid khan and the best part about the team is their balanced status! Just the perfect openers and along with that middle and lower middle order gaining momentum and quick runs and the bowlers, bowling it right away.
Mumbai, on the other hand, have services of Lasith Malinga along with Bhajji that has given the team a boost since the last match against KKR. The new one on blocks Nitish Rana and Pandya brothers are also the talk of the league. Mumbai Indian is the most unpredictable team in the IPL. They won the 2 title of IPL. In first 5 seasons, they did not perform well. But in last four seasons, they won 2 titles. They have snatched wins and points from most difficult situations.
PREDICTED XI:
Shikhar Dhawan, David Warner (C), Moises Henriques, Naman Ojha, Yuvraj Singh, Deepak Hooda, Ben Cutting, Mustafizur Rahman, Ashish Nehra, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Bipul Sharma.