Five-time champions Mumbai Indians’ horrible campaign was agonisingly extended as the Sunrisers Hyderabad kept their qualification hopes alive with a nail-biting three-run win. The game was ridiculously close, as both sides seemed neck and neck at almost every stage of the game. The Sunrisers batting fired on all cylinders as they posted a humongous total of 193 for the record champions to chase down.
Bolstered by an excellent start, the Mumbai Indians looked well on track to take the game home convincingly before a magnificent 18th over wicket maiden courtesy of veteran pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar swung things the way of the Orange Army, who eventually took the fixture by a three-run margin. The win keeps the Sunrisers in the race with an outside chance of qualification, contingent on teams above them faltering in the final stages of the tournament.
Mumbai skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and decided to bowl first on a beautiful batting track at the Wankhede. The decision did seem to backfire initially as despite Abhishek Sharma falling early with just nine runs on the board, his partner Priyam Garg, and number three entrant Rahul Tripathi were playing brilliantly, scoring in excess of ten runs an over. Garg and Tripathi were both excellent with the bat, as both of them were timing the ball magnificently well. The duo added 78 for the second wicket, before a tame dismissal for the promising Garg saw the youngster head back to the pavilion.
Tripathi carried on as Nicholas Pooran made his way into the middle. The West Indian immediately got off the blocks, scoring at a high strike rate from the very outset. The two batted beautifully, with Tripathi also getting a move on. Pooran’s explosion perfectly coincided with Tripathi’s transition, and the two added 76 runs for the third wicket in no time. However, the Mumbai bowlers tried to pull things back, getting rid of Pooran, Tripathi and Aiden Markram in rapid succession. Ramandeep Singh was the unlikely hero with the ball, picking up 3/20, as MI were able to keep SRH down to 193, a huge improvement for the past champions considering the start that PBKS got.
Ishan Kishan and Rohit started off slowly, but picked up pace in no time, as the Mumbai captain seemed to come back into form, after a string of low scores in this edition of the tournament. Sharma was playing fabulously, as he was striking sixes for fun in the first six overs. Kishan also joined the party sooner rather than later, as the scoreboard pressure was more or so down. Sharma and Kishan neared their 100-run partnership in under ten overs before a typical matchup saw Washington Sundar get rid of Rohit.
Both Kishan and Sharma were eliminated as the Mumbai lineup were put under immense pressure. The relatively inexperienced collector, Tim David brought some hope with a very high accuracy. Nonetheless, Natarajan was able to get rid of David off a run-out before Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled a magnificent maiden over to complicate the asking rate, However, with the task too big, and the tea too inexperienced, the Mumbai Indians were only able to lose another game, this time by three runs.
Brief scores
Sunrisers Hyderabad 193 for 6 (Tripathi 76, Garg 42, Pooran 38, Ramandeep 3-20) beat Mumbai Indians 190 for 7 (Rohit 48, David 46, Kishan 43, Malik 3-23) by 3 runs
