Mumbai Indians win to remain in the top-half

Mumbai Indians have not played like a champion side this season. Their batters have struggled to score runs and that’s been their major problem throughout this tournament. Rajasthan Royals is one of the weaker teams this season and I expected Mumbai Indians to bolster their batting unit because a loss against Rajasthan Royals would have been disastrous for them. But I was surprised to see that they dropped Ishan Kishan instead and replaced him with Nathan Coulter Nile. It meant that they bolstered their bowling attack and one look at their team sheet made me feel that they are light on batting.

Rajasthan Royals on the other hand doesn’t have many options in front of them so quite expectedly they went with the same playing XI. 

A doubleheader on a weekday is not a preferable option for me because I have a day job to take care of and hence I followed the match mostly through online score updates.

So let’s look at the hits and misses from yesterday’s match.

The Hits:

The wickets column doesn’t always give you the perfect picture. Yesterday Jasprit Bumrah took only one wicket but his performance was way above the rest on the field. 4 overs for 15 runs when the opposition scores 171 tells you that his economical spell made a big difference between Rajasthan Royals scoring an average total against a big one. You need to have a bit of luck when it comes to picking up wickets but unfortunately, Bumrah is not having that luck at the moment but he has made sure that he is at his economical best which in turn is helping Mumbai Indias to stifle oppositions.

Rahul Chahar has had some match-winning performances under his belt this season. His match-winning spell against KKR has been a big confidence booster for him and he has been among the wickets ever since. Mumbai Indians have been winning matches due to their bowlers and Rahul Chahar was on the forefront yesterday too. Jos Buttler and Yashasvi Jaiswal made a good start yesterday. In fact, Buttler looked in good touch for a big innings when Chahar stuck and he followed that up by picking up Jaiswal too. This double breakthrough put a break to Rajasthan’s scoring rate and in the end, they couldn’t put up a challenging total.

Before the match I expected Mumbai Indians to drop Quinton De Kock because he had hardly scored any runs this season. But they stuck with him and yesterday QDK gave the returns. He not only batted right through, but he scored a quick rate too. Mumbai thus far has been very dependent on Rohit and Surya Kumar Yadav and when these two wickets fell there was a chance of a meltdown but QDK made sure that he kept his end up. He got able support from Krunal Pandya and in the end, Mumbai Indians won the match quite easily with 9 balls to spare.

The Misses:

Shivam Dube is getting an extended run this season because Rajasthan Royals is short on the bench. He is yet to play any special knock and his domestic form is yet to be replicated in IPL. He must consider himself extremely lucky that Rajasthan Royals is persisting him at number 4 because he is yet to play a forceful innings. Yesterday after a good start what Rajasthan Royals needed was an enforcing innings from Dube. But that didn’t happen and he wasted too many deliveries which meant that their finisher Miller didn’t get many deliveries to play. I think if Dube has to play then he should come down the order because Rajasthan is losing momentum in the middle overs because of him.

Jos Buttler looked in good touch yesterday but due to the void that’s created due to injuries in the team, he needs to play long innings.  Good-looking 30s and 40s won’t help Rajasthan Royals to win matches. Yesterday he was looking good to play a big one but then got out trying to be over-ambitious. I hope he plays some big knocks in the upcoming matches because when Jos Buttler plays well, it makes for great viewing.

Playing Nathan Coulter-Nile and Jayant Yadav together was a very surprising move from Mumbai Indians. Both of them didn’t give any eye-catching performance and though Mumbai Indians won the match easily I do not think it is the right combination for them going forward.

Mustafizur  Rahman is the leader of the bowling attack in the Rajasthan Royals team. It is hence very important that he performs to his potential on all the match days. Rajasthan Royals would need him and Chris Morris to perform consistently with the ball otherwise they would find it very difficult to win matches against the top-ranking teams. For IPL to be competitive, teams like Rajasthan Royals must win a few matches. A one-sided tournament is not great for viewers and right now there is a big chance that we might have the most one-sided IPL ever.

For the sake of the viewers, teams like Rajasthan Royals must win against the top 4 ranked team in the upcoming future.

What to look forward to?

For Rajasthan Royals, it’s looking extremely difficult to make an impact in the tournament. For them to turn this around they need to have their best batters play some significant knocks. Holding back Miller is not a very smart decision and they should play him at number 4. They will also hope that their three main batters, Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, and David Miller play significant knocks going forward. 

For Mumbai Indians, I feel they got their combination wrong yesterday even though they won the match. Dropping Ishan Kishan didn’t feel good and I hope they reverse the decision in the next match. I would suggest having him back in the playing XI in place of Jayant Yadav. They have a good bowling attack and they are in good form so once their middle-order gets runs under their belt, we might as well see Mumbai Indians lifting the trophy once again.

So what do you think? Should Ishan Kishan get back his spot in the playing XI?

Do write in as another match awaits us today evening. This time it’s Punjab Kings Vs Royal Challengers Bangalore.

PS. We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.

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