Mumbai Indians
Defending champions Mumbai Indians notched up their first win of the ongoing IPL edition by defeating Kolkata Knight Riders at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Tuesday.
Suryakumar Yadav hit a 36-ball 56 while skipper Rohit Sharma made 43 from 32 balls before Mumbai was hit by Andre Russell's bowling heroics late in the innings. Russell picked a fifer including three wickets -- Krunal Pandya (15), Jasprit Bumrah (0) and Rahul Chahar (8) -- in his last over as Mumbai ended up posting 152 on the scoreboard.
In reply, Mumbai's bowling unit was strengthened by Rahul Chahar's four-fer and brilliant death-overs show from Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult. Despite a fifty from Nitish Rana, KKR were able to post just 142 in their 20 overs.
In the post-match presentation, Rohit admitted that his side was 15-20 runs short in Chennai but credited the bowlers for staging a turnaround. "Was a great fightback, excellent fightback by each one of them. You don't see a game like this often. Lots of confidence from this game and we move forward. KKR batted brilliantly in the powerplay.
"Rahul came and got us crucial wickets in the middle; Krunal bowling those overs at the end was vital as well. It was a complete team effort and credit to all the bowlers," said a beaming Mumbai Indians skipper.
"As batters, you need to carry on. The trend in Chennai is you can't hit from ball one. You have to plan before you go into bat. We were 15-20 runs short. Should have batted well at the fag end. We need to understand how we need to bat at the death but I don't want to take anything away from the boys," he added.
Rohit also heaped praise on 'fearless' Suryakumar, who carried his rich vein of form to bring up his first fifty of this year's IPL.
"SKY has carried his form well. He plays fearless and it's a positive sign for us in the first few overs. We need a guy there to do that. We have done the finishing part well as a team, just that we need to understand the surfaces here and adapt," concluded Rohit.
