It was the not the way what Mumbai Indians would have expected the evening to go. They had their best of the players, good opening pair and giants like Rohit Sharma in the side but all of the team failed to deliver on the field at the biggest stage in the final.
The way they started their innings was quite surprising and Rising Pune Supergiant, their opposition team was first one to troll Mumbai Indians as they tweeted –
However, the deleted the tweet later, after watching Mumbai getting back on the track.
Talking of the game, the Mumbai batting line-up flattened in front of Pune bowlers. They lost the first wicket in form of Parthiv Patel on a score of seven and this was not it as just after a distance of one run, Lendl Simmons followed Parthiv in the same over. It was a spectacular catch from Jaydev Unadkat who caught Simmons just inches above the ground off his own bowling, to make it difficult for Mumbai team.
Succeeding batsmen Ambati Rayudu and Rohit Sharma tried best and shared 38 runs for the third wicket but a runout at the end brought an end to Rayudu’s innings and from there, Mumbai batting line-up experienced a downfall.
The biggest surprise of the evening was the way Karn Sharma ran out himself as he edged one delivery towards first slips, where Daniel Chain dropped a difficult catch. Meanwhile, Karn and Krunal Pandya were busy confusing themselves as they were thinking to run for that or not. Till the time they could come up with a decision, Christian had done his work and he threw the ball towards stumps which bowler Shardul Thakur collected to make a contact with stumps, to mark an end of Karn Sharma’s innings.
It looked like Mumbai would not even touch the 100 run mark but then came the turning moment when Krunal Pandya realised the need of an innings and he stretched Mumbai’s innings, scoring crucial 47 runs, which can also prove to be a match-winning one in the end.
But to summarise the first 20 overs, it was a poor display of batting from Mumbai which resulted in this. Had Krunal not stood up for his team, Mumbai would have found it difficult to even play full 20 overs.
The two-time champions now need to defend a target of 130, which seems to be a difficult one for them. Mumbai bowlers have to come up with an out of the box performance in order to defend this total.