Mukesh Ambani-owned Mumbai Indians beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 13 runs in another low-scoring IPL match on Saturday night.
Batting first, Mumbai Indians had scored 150-5 in their quota of 20 overs with no batsman being able to score a fifty. Quinton de Kock emerged as the top-scorer with a knock of 40 runs. Kieron Pollard made 35, while Rohit Sharma contributed with a quickfire 32 runs that he faced 25 balls to score.
Sunrisers Hyderabad began their run-chase on a promising note with Jonny Bairstow and David Warner comfortably scoring runs at more than 10 runs an over. However, Bairstow was out hit wicket at 43 in 22 balls and Warner ran himself out after making 36, the SRH began to face a batting collapse of sorts.
The SRH were later bundled out for 137 with Trent Boult finishing with a bowling figure of 3-28. Rahul Chahar finished with 3-19 in four overs.
Reacting to his side’s loss, Warner said after the match, “I don’t know how to take that. Two of us got set, my run out, Jonny stepping on his wickets, and false shots in the middle proved that if you don’t have two guys at the end, you don’t win. These scores are very chaseable, it’s just poor batting. If you get a partnership and have one guy at the end, you can chase down 150 easily. You just need smart cricket in the middle, we aren’t doing that. I think our bowlers adapted well to this wicket, it’s slower than the ones we played on earlier. We’ve got to learn from the mistakes and right now it’s just the batsmen. We’ve got to take responsibility. Got to move forward, put some smiles on our faces. Have been speaking to the physio and Williamson is coming along nicely and I’m sure if he’s ready to go he might get an opportunity.”
Sharma, for his part, said, “”It was a great effort from the bowling unit. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. On that pitch, when you’re bowling well, it’s not easy. I thought it was a good score on that pitch. You saw from both the teams, trying to capitalise on the powerplay. Having said that, I think we can bat better in the middle overs. All these guys have played a lot of cricket on pitches like these. So, there are areas to work on. At the same time, don’t want to be too harsh on the guys. I think the pitch gets slower and slower. Rahul was turning the ball in his fourth over, which was the 12th or 13th over. That doesn’t happen in Mumbai. The ball was reversing as well. The slowishness of the deck doesn’t allow batsmen to come and slog straightaway. One set batter carrying through is needed, which is what’s not happening for all of the teams that have played here. Polly has done it for so many years for us at the back end. We have the confidence in him. It’s all about him getting some time in the middle. Our fielding was really good tonight, that’s something we take pride in, those run outs and also the catches.”
Kieron Pollard was declared Man Of The Match.