The five-time champions registered their second win of the season
The last two IPL seasons were nothing short of a nightmare for Mumbai Indians as the team failed to qualify for the playoffs and even finished last in IPL 2022. Many experts had predicted that MI won’t reach the playoffs last year because the team had a very weak bowling attack and their middle order was not in form either. The predictions proved to be right as the team performed miserably last year with only a few batters performing and the bowling not performing as per expectations. A better performance was expected by the team come IPL 2024 especially in the bowling department.
The franchisee did address the issues in the bowling department by adding Jasen Behrendoff and Jhye Richardson to the bowling department along with Bumrah and Archer. The pace quartet made the MI bowling look much better compared to last season which gave the MI supporters a chance to smile. But the smile did not last long as news came in that Bumrah had been ruled out of IPL 2024 which was a big blow for the team as their bowling revolved around Bumrah and Archer but with injury to Bumrah who was followed by Australian Quick Richardson MI bowling started looking depleted again.
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But as it is said, good teams do not complain they find solutions and that’s what MI did. After losing the first couple of matches it seems like the team has finally found the right combination in the bowling department with Behrendoff and Meredith leading the pace attack along with young all-rounders like Cameron Green Arjun Tendulkar and Dwayne Jansen providing good support.
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Talking about the match, MI bowled first after winning the toss against KKR with Arjun Tendulkar and Dwane Jansen making their debut for MI. The men in blue got off to a good start with Green picking up KKR’S first wicket inside the powerplay. Chawla complimented the Australian all-rounder as he picked up the second wicket. These were the only moments to celebrate for MI for a while as Venkatesh Iyer started attacking the MI bowlers and completed his half-century in quick time. He was well supported by captain Nitish Rana who also batted at a good strike rate. Iyer continued hitting the ball from the middle of the bat even as wickets kept falling at the other end and completed only the second century by a KKR batter in the history of the IPL. The left-hander got out in the end overs of the innings which meant that KKR ended up with a score of 174 as no other batter got going.
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Mumbai got off to a flier led by Ishan Kishan who started hitting the bowlers to the boundary at will. The left-hander attacked the strength of KKR i.e. their spinners as the trio of Narine Chakravarty and Suyash Sharma were left clueless by such clean hitting. At the other end, Rohit Sharma who was not in the playing eleven due to a stomach bug and came in as an impact player also got a start but was dismissed after scoring a quick-fire 20. Kishan was joined by stand-in captain Surya and the duo ensured that KKR did not get back in the game through their sensible batting along with support from Tilak Verma and Tim David.
