MI began the IPL 2023 league like they with most other seasons, with some poor performances. But thereafter, their fearsome batting line-up, bolstered by some insane hitting from Suryakumar Yadav. Tilak Varma, Tim David, and the rest brought them to a stage where they looked like sailing into the qualifiers with minimum fuss.
Mumbai: The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 league contests have been quite a topsy-turvy ride for almost all sides, including those favoured to go all the way. Mumbai Indians (MI) are always among those favoured to lift the crown, but even they find themselves in a situation they would have loved to avoid. With their last league match, a home contest, still holding a lot of meaning in terms of making it through to the qualifiers, MI need to avoid all slip-ups, even if they are facing bottom-rankers SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH). As for their rivals, it has been an unending nightmare that they would like to end soon, hopefully on a winning note.
MI began the IPL 2023 league like they with most other seasons, with some poor performances. But thereafter, their fearsome batting line-up, bolstered by some insane hitting from Suryakumar Yadav. Tilak Varma, Tim David, and the rest brought them to a stage where they looked like sailing into the qualifiers with minimum fuss.
But then, some losses, including one in their last match, have found MI being demoted to 6th position on the IPL 2023 points table, for the moment, with a poor Nett Run-Rate.
Essentially, MI need to beat SRH and by a hefty margin, be it chasing or defending. If there was a silver lining to all of this, it would be that MI are playing at home and against SRH, who don’t even seem to be winning an argument nowadays.
But MI won’t be too pleased about their loss to Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in their last game, a loss that catapulted LSG up the order and made MI’s last game a critical engagement. For once, the MI batting did not deliver as well as it should have and it all came down in a heap.
Crucial in this was Yadav’s early dismissal. He has been the lynchpin of the MI batting and almost all their victories can be attributed to some good insane hitting from the batter.
The bowling wasn’t too bad, even in the last game, though Chris Jordan once again proved to be expensive, as he has for MI and several other franchises over the years.
As for SRH, it was their fourth loss from five matches, relinquishing them to the bottom of the table. They had no challenge to offer to Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), with Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis making a mockery of SRH’s resistance. RCB could even have won by 10 wickets.
This was after Heinrich Klaasen scored a superb century during the SRH inning. It is amazing that a side that has two century-makers in IPL 2023 should end up at the end of the table. Speaks volumes for the rest of the batting.
As for the bowling, it too has been a litany of woes, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s lead in the effort fading away over the league and the rest not shaping up either.
So, SRH are at the end of their tether and tenure, but it is still a game MI must win, in order to extend their own presence in IPL 2023. Almost a knockout situation and those can really throw up some shocks.
