Okay, let’s dive straight into this and get to the point. Mumbai Indians have to win a match. Period. And NOW. 5 matches in this season of the Indian Premier League, and they have only managed one win so far. They won’t get many better chances that this, playing against Sunrisers Hyderabad, who have two consecutive losses now. Plus, Mumbai have the home advantage.
Teams
We don’t have clarity on the Shikhar Dhawan injury as yet. Initially, it didn’t look too serious but he missed the next game and honestly, Ricky Bhui may not be even half as good a replacement. However, Dhawan should mostly be back to boost the team’s batting, which is must needed. Another worry would be that of Rashid Khan being hit around the park in the last 2 games, and conceding his worst T20 figures in one of them. Bhuvneshwar will be rested for this game and Sandeep Sharma is the likely replacement.
The reason I say that is while MI have power hitters like Evin Lewis and Rohit Sharma in the team, it’s the local lads Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan who attracted all the eye balls in the last game. Pollard was even promoted in that match and he did a good job. This just shows how versatile and flexible this MI batting line up is, not forgetting the Pandya brothers who can give the ball a good slog as well.
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While Mumbai have a clearly stronger batting side, they need to do better with the ball if they have a strong together some wins. All of their losses have come in the last over of the game, because they weren’t able to defend scores that were pretty defend-able. While Mustafizur Rahman has 6 wickets in 5 games, he has been figured out by batsmen, and has gone for plenty. Is it time to swap him out for someone like Cutting or Dananjaya or even JP Duminy?
Overall
Overall, I believe that SRH seem to have gone slightly into a shell after that impressive start of three wins. Also, with Mumbai’s history of coming to the party late in all seasons of the IPL, it’s high time they win a game and rise from the bottom of the table. If they manage to bowl first, I’m backing Mumbai to win this game. One positive for SRH is that they have won 4 of their last 5 games against Mumbai, including the reverse fixture a week back, where they won by 1 wicket.
