IPL-2023: Mumbai Indians beat Rajasthan Royals by six wickets in Mumbai
Mumbai Indians beat Rajasthan Royals by six wickets in Mumbai at Wankhede Stadium. Mumbai Indians surpassed the target of 213 runs for 4 wickets in 19.3 overs. Yashasvi Jaiswal of Rajasthan Royals who scored 124 runs in 62 balls declared Player of the Match.
Tim David’s 45* off 14 powered Mumbai Indians to the highest successful chase at the Wankhede Stadium, rendering Yashasvi Jaiswal’s maiden IPL hundred earlier in the day in vain. It was one of the few records notched up on a milestone night in Mumbai that witnessed IPL’s 1000th game (seven washed out contests not included) in action.
When Suryakumar got out, MI needed 58 runs off 26 balls. Despite the dew, it was a tricky phase of play for the hosts because Tilak Varma wasn’t batting at his absolute best. Luckily, he had Tim David’s experience at the end. RR’s decision to bowl out Trent Boult by the 18th over gave them two clear overs to make the required 32 runs. Sandeep Sharma bowled the penultimate over but conceded a six and a four. All that before Jason Holder conceded three consecutive sixes off the first three balls of the final over, defusing what was shaping to be a very tight finish.
That RR, in fact, had opted to bat first on what’s essentially a chasing ground, and racked up 212/7 in response. It was a total built around Yashasvi Jaiswal’s one-man show but MI had more than one batter chipping in with useful cameos. While Cameron Green made 44 off 26, Suryakumar scored 55 off 29 and Varma did his bit with a tinfoil innings of 29* off 21. And the dew that fell ensured that batting got progressively easier and RR clearly didn’t have the buffer runs in place.
Was it a dry pitch by Wankhede standards? Maybe. Did it look like that when Jaiswal was batting? No. Such was the nature of his innings. Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, Devdutt Padikkal, Jason Holder and Shimron Hetmyer combined to score only 53 runs on the surface, with extras being the second highest run-getter in the innings, but Jaiswal was unstoppable on the night and scored 16 fours and 8 sixes all around the park. It was as if he was batting at home.
It all started with a hooked six against Cameron Green in the first over. An encore against Jofra Archer in the next over followed, and by the time Riley Meredith came on to bowl the fifth over of the Powerplay, Jaiswal was on song, hitting the fast bowler for four boundaries in the over. And as the day would have it, he got to his hundred with another pull off Meredith, becoming the fourth youngest player to make an IPL hundred. And by the end of it, he had the highest individual score by an uncapped player in IPL.
