Yesterday, Mumbai Indians earned their third win of the season by beating Kolkata Knight Riders by 13 runs in the home game at Wankhede Stadium. Mumbai Indians is in a very desperate needs of wins, in order to qualify in the playoffs, the team needs to win every single match they play from now onwards.
Before the match started Mumbai Indians were invited to bat first as the toss was won by Dinesh Karthik, the skipper of Kolkata Knight Riders.
The match belonged to the players of Mumbai Indians in both the innings. However, the first innings was opened with a more powerful start from the bat of Suryakumar Yadav, who played another brilliant knock today and scored 59 runs off 39 balls, hitting 7 fours and 2 sixes. With this, he scored his fourth half-century of the season.
On the other hand, Evin scored 43 runsoff 28 balls. Pandya brothers too played well, especially Hardik Pandya, who played a thrilling knock and remained unbeaten at the score 35 runs in 20 balls. The players of the team stretched the scores to 181 runs, which was enough at the end of the match.
In the second innings, the bowlers of Mumbai Indians made the lives of the batsmen of KKR a bit tougher by their death bowling. The second innings was opened by Chris Lynn, who scored 17 runs off 13 balls. Robin Uthappa, scored 54 runs in 35 balls, giving a power packed performance.And then Nitish Rana and Robin Uthappa took the onus on themselves.
However, the second innings was turned by Dinesh Karthik, the skipper of Kolkata Knight Riders, who tried his best to win the game but fell short by 13 runs. He scored 36 runs in 26 balls, hitting 5 fours and 1 six.
Hardik Pandya was given Man of the Match title for his brilliant performance in both the innings, talking about the match, he said:
“Quite happy to have the Purple Cap. More than that I am happy that the team won and that was my plan. I have been bowling for the Indian team in all games and that gives confidence. In the last one year I have learnt a lot of things while bowling for India. I always want to keep improving.
In T20 you might go for runs but you can always come back and today I did that. Today when Rohit got out JP was going in next but Mahela stopped him and said Hardik you have to go. I love to bat up the order, happy that I got the chance.”
The hit-man Sharma or Rohit Sharma, the skipper of Mumbai Indians said:
“This victory was much needed for us to stay in the competition, it was a great effort from the bowling unit. It was always going to be tough for us with the way they batted in the first 10 overs. We kept taking wickets which was a crucial part.
I thought it was a good pitch from the last time we played here, it played nicely. We knew it will play a little slower because of the heat here. We adjusted well but we still have to do some work with the bat to finish off the games, considering the start we got.
We should have got 15-20 runs more, some work needs to be done there. We are not short of power hitting, with so much ability with the bat at times it becomes difficult to utilize them. We have got three power hitters in the team, Ben is a great striker of the ball but he hasn’t got enough time to bat in the middle.
I know at sometime in the tournament he will play a crucial role. At Wankhede, you can’t keep bowling the same length, you don’t want to be predictable here. So, with the field we set we never allow the batsmen to think what we are going to bowl.
Under the lights pitch gets better so idea was to keep the batsmen guessing. I think Krunal is a very smart cricketer and that is the reason i went with him in the last over.”
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