Mumbai Indians players celebrate a Kings XI Punjab wicket in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
Defending champions Mumbai Indians have once again shown they are the most dangerous side in the competition as they ripped a confident Kings XI Punjab to shreds in a massive 48–run win in match 13 of IPL 2020 in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
Protecting 192, MI bowlers put an all-round performance to restrict KXIP at 143/8. James Pattinson, Jasprit Bumrah and Rahul Chahar picked two each as their effort ensured that the Kings came nowhere close to the target imposed by skipper Rohit Sharma’s 70 runs of 47 deliveries in the first innings.
He was aptly backed by Keiron Pollard’s (47 off 20) and Hardik Pandya’s (30 off 11) unbeaten fifth-wicket 67-run partnership, which took MI to 191/4 at the end of 20th over.
For KXIP, on the other hand, their bowling fallacies were severely exposed in the innings when it took on two of the strongest hitters of the ball in Pollard and Pandya in the death overs. The duo shot six huge sixes and as many boundaries in the death overs as KXIP leaked 89 runs in the last five overs.
25 of them came in the last over, when S Gowtham was shot for four sixes, including a 97m-long hit by Pollard.
Skipper Rahul had some blame to take here as his decision to bowl out the entire quota of Sheldon Cottrell’s (20/1) spell by 13th over came back to haunt him as Jimmy Neesham (52/0) and Gowtham (45/1) had no idea how to contain the brute force of the MI batting in the closing stages.
This came after Rohit yet again showed why he is the most successful captain in the history of IPL. The skipper scored a captain’s knock, smashing eight fours and three sixes, to bail his side out of trouble after MI were reeling at 21/2 by the fifth over. He received much-needed support from Ishan Kishan (28 off 32) for the third-wicket 62-run stand.
Chasing 192, in-form KXIP skipper Rahul (17 off 19) couldn’t replicate his counterpart’s effort as his departure in the ninth over saw KXIP in deep trouble at 60/3.
Mayank Agarwal’s (25 off 18) initiative saw KXIP quickly fetch 37 runs in first four over. But the dangerous-looking partnership was halted by Jasprit Bumrah, who clean bowled Mayank (25 off 18) in the fifth over. Krunal Pandya quickly added to KXIP’s woes in the next over as he played down Karun Nair for a duck with Rahul Chahar bowling out his namesake at the beginning of 9th over.
Nicholas Pooran (41 off 26) was the lone batsman who found some runs in the middle while rest of them never looked comfortable in the middle as the match turned into a formality once Pooran departed in the 14th over with 101/4 on board.
