Six wins in a row for Mumbai Indians
By winning its sixth game on the trot thanks to another all-round team contribution, the Mumbai Indians inched closer to a semi-final berth in the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL).
The last time these two teams met earlier in the Twenty20 tournament, Adam Gilchrist scored the fastest century of the IPL and ensured his side, Hyderabad Deccan Chargers, won by 10 wickets. But this time around in Match 42, the Mumbai Indians ended up being the victorious team by beating the Hyderabad franchise by 25 runs.
Played at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium at Hyderabad, captain Adam Gilchrist won the toss and elected to field.
Sanath Jayasuriya continued his run fest in the IPL by scoring 36 off 15 balls before falling with the team score on 39 in the third over. Sachin Tendulkar got a start in this match but wasn’t able to get past 23. Abhishek Nayar and Dwayne Bravo chipped in with a 54-run partnership to take their team to the 150 mark in the eighteenth over. The other batsmen in the side contributed with small but significant scores to take Mumbai to a defendable 178/7 in their 20 overs.
RP Singh picked up 3 wickets for the Chargers while Venugopal Rao and Shahid Afridi picked up 2 wickets apiece.
The home team did not get off to the best of starts when they lost Shahid Afridi in the second over of the match. Before long, Adam Gilchrist, Rohit Sharma and Chamara Silva found themselves back in the dugout and the Hyderabad franchise found itself in dire straits at 56/4 in the tenth over.
Venugopal Rao and Dwaraka Ravi Teja then went about rebuilding the Deccan innings with a 74-run partnership, of which the former scored 57 and the latter 37.
But the run rate that was beginning to climb now called for two boundaries an over to reach the target set by Tendulkar’s team. In an attempt to accelerate proceedings, Rao and Teja both perished and by then it was too late for the lower middle order to resuscitate its home side. The Mumbai Indians ended up with its sixth victory, all coming after four losses at the start of the tournament.
Playing his last IPL match before he heads home to play for his national team, Dwayne Bravo came up with a match-winning performance and picked up the Player of the Match award for his tight bowling spell of 3 wickets for 24 runs in his 4 overs and also for his cameo batting knock earlier.
Mumbai is now at the fourth position on the IPL points table and looks set for a berth in the next round, provided the players keep up the good form. This was Hyderabad’s ninth loss in their eleventh match which gives them no hope whatsoever of making it to the next stage of the IPL.
In Match 43 of the IPL, the Delhi Daredevils will be looking to further boost their chances of a semi-final berth as they take on the beleaguered Bangalore Royal Challengers at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.