2 weeks ago
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The Mumbai Indians will be hosting the Kolkata Knight Riders in Match 51 of IPL 2024 at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai.
The two franchises have encountered sharply divergent seasons up to this point, with both just one position away from the top and bottom of the standings, respectively. Reflecting on recent outings, the visitors have experienced a mixed bag of results of late, following a back-and-forth pattern of winning and losing in their last five games. Conversely, the hosts have weathered turbulent times, tasting victory in only one of their past five games.
KKR's previous outing against the Delhi Capitals at the panoramic Eden Gardens saw the Shreyas Iyer-led side dominate proceedings with an all-round exhibition. Following an unexpected decision by the opposition skipper, Rishabh Pant, to bat first upon winning the toss, KKR kept the DC batters under constant pressure, stifling their efforts with regular breakthroughs. No one could really get going with Pant getting dismissed at the halfway stage to leave DC in all sorts of trouble. The highest scorer for DC came from Kuldeep Yadav's bat, underscoring the splendid efforts of the KKR bowlers, who were successful in their efforts of keeping DC's batters at bay. Other than the left-arm pace of Mitchell Starc, whose disappointing season continued, all the others were bang on; the Indian duo of Vaibhav Arora and Harshit Rana returning almost identical figures and the spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy applying the brakes in impeccable fashion.
While Sunil Narine was a little subdued during his stay in the middle, it was Phil Salt who went hammer and tongs into the DC bowling lineup, firing a quickfire 68 (33). He was well and truly on his way to scoring his third ton in T20s, but unfortunately got cleaned up by a flat arm-ball. After Rinku got dismissed at a run-a-ball score of 11 off 11, it was skipper Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer who got KKR past the winning line by cantering through for victory, winning their side the game by seven wickets with 3.3 overs to spare.
MI's previous encounter against the Lucknow Super Giants was quite a laboured outing for them. Getting sent to bat first, no one really got going with Ishan Kishan playing a 36-ball knock scoring only 32. After losing Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik off successive deliveries, MI were in all sorts of trouble at 28/4 on the completion of the powerplay. Nehal Wadhera, while playing along with Kishan, was busy steadying the ship. However, as soon as Tim David came in, Wadhera became much more enterprising with his strokeplay, ending up with a 41-ball 46-run knock. The impulse at the death came from the bat of David, courtesy of a 17-run last over to end up with a regal cameo of 35 off 18.
Nuwan Thusara struck early, taking the wicket of debutant Arshin Kulkarni on the fourth ball of LSG's innings. It was Marcus Stoinis who took the game away, courtesy of a splendid 62 (45). Skipper Hardik had a good outing with the ball, ending up with 2/26 in his quota, with Jasprit Bumrah and Piyush Chawla trying their level best. However, Nicholas Pooran ensured a victory in the last over of the match, granting MI a four-wicket loss and piling on further misery for the five-time winners.
Probable Playing XIs
Mumbai Indians
Ishan Kishan (wk), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Nehal Wadhera, Hardik Pandya (c), Tim David, Mohammad Nabi, Gerald Coetzee, Piyush Chawla, Jasprit Bumrah
Impact Player - Nuwan Thushara
Kolkata Knight Riders
Phil Salt (wk), Sunil Narine, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Andre Russell, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Varun Chakravarthy
Impact Player - Anukul Roy
English (US)