Mumbai: 5-time champions Mumbai Indians will face 2016 champions Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL T20 cricket series today at 3.30 pm at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
Sunrisers Hyderabad missed out on a place in the play-offs. Meanwhile, Mumbai are at the 6th position in the table with 14 points with 7 wins from 13 matches. Today’s match is considered to be Mumbai’s last chance. At home, the team has been forced to focus on increasing their net run rate after registering a huge run-rate. Currently, Mumbai’s net run rate is -0.128.
With 14 points, Royal Challengers have a net run rate of 0.180. The team will take on the points-topping Gujarat Titans in their last league game tonight. If Bengaluru wins this match, the team will finish the league with 16 points. If Mumbai team wins against Hyderabad, they will also reach 16 points. Net run rate becomes important when this situation arises. Perhaps if Mumbai team wins their match and Bengaluru team falls to Gujarat, then Mumbai will easily enter the play-off round.
The Rohit Sharma-led Mumbai team squandered chances in the last two matches. A win against Gujarat allowed them to score more runs. Meanwhile, in the match against the Lucknow team, they missed the victory by 5 runs. Mumbai bowlers are weak in scoring high runs in home matches. 4 times against Mumbai at the Wankhede stadium this season, the opposition have scored more than 200 runs. This puts a lot of pressure on the Mumbai batsmen during the chase.
Especially in the final overs, the Mumbai bowlers are stumbling as they are unable to control the opponent’s run accumulation. Mumbai team may try to solve this in today’s game. Looking for a big win, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Nehal Vadera and Tim David are likely to get some good batting.
Skipper Rohit Sharma has scored 29 runs off 18 balls and 37 runs off 25 balls in the last two games, having gone in single figures in 5 games and not scoring 2 runs. A good innings is likely to emerge from him in today’s game. Hyderabad may act without pressure as they have nothing to lose. Heinrich Clausen, who scored a century in the last game, may challenge the Mumbai bowlers.
