IPL-2024: Mumbai Indians to take on Punjab Kings in Chandigarh: PBKS opt to bowl
Today Mumbai Indians will take on Punjab Kings at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, Chandigarh. The match will begin at 7:30 this evening. Punjab Kings have won the toss and have opted to field.
Shikhar Dhawan missed the last game due to a niggle and looks like he will miss this game as well. Sam Curran is walking out.
Hardik Pandya: We were wanting to bat first as well, so good toss to lose. We don’t judge (our performances), couple of times we had the game in our grasp and didn’t finish the game, IPL tests you, when the game is not over it is not over. We just take it game by game, go out there and give our 100 percent. Every indivdual should commit to the team’s goal and once we do that, the results will be seen. Same team.
Sam Curran: We will have a bowl. Keeping up with the trend of the tournament. Shikhar is not well, so that’s the only injury and Rilee comes in for Jonny today. It is not nice to lose the close games but we are doing a lot of things right. Taide drops out of the side, just a couple of tactical changes.
Only minor details separate Punjab Kings and Mumbai Indians. Places seventh and eighth respectively in the standings due to a minute decimal-point difference in their NRR, both have four points in six games and are desperate for more as they hit the halfway mark in their IPL 2024 campaigns on Thursday (April 18). Both are coming into the contest on the back of last-over defeats, except MI had regained a bit of momentum before going down to CSK despite Rohit Sharma’s first IPL ton in 12 years.
Both have a stand-out pacer who’s lacked consistent support at the other end. Jasprit Bumrah (ER 6.08) has proved difficult to put away even on days he’s gone wicket-less, whereas PBKS have Kagiso Rabada (ER 7.95) hitting top form once again, which the opponents have been wary of. Both teams have a couple of batters doing the heavy-lifting for the side – for the hosts, it’s the uncapped duo of Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma at the backend saving them the blushes and for MI it’s their experienced opening pair of Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan giving them blazing starts consistently. Only once have MI scored under 50 runs in the PowerPlays this season.
MI in fact are the third-best team in PowerPlays in IPL 2024, averaging 48 with a run-rate of 10.67 and the second-best boundary percentage of 29.2. They have also hit most sixes (23) in this phase.
However, after four straight games in the comforts of their home ground, the next track might not be as free-scoring. Mullanpur has been the lowest scoring venue in PowerPlays with a run rate of just 7.28 as compared to the season average of 9.18. This is where the start from in-form MI openers will be imperative to the team’s chances of getting back to winning ways, especially given their captain Hardik Pandya’s indifferent form and Suryakumar Yadav’s mixed-bag of a season since his return from injury.
On the contrary, Punjab’s top-order troubles are well documented. Their top-three have aggregated just 382 runs, which is the lowest in IPL 2024, and the solitary 50+ knock has come from their captain Shikhar Dhawan’s bat. However, his shoulder injury has compounded PBKS’ batting woes.
Despite the unfavourable results though, Punjab haven’t chopped and changed much this year, consistently backing the likes of Prabhsimran Singh, Jonny Bairstow and Jitesh Sharma to come good. With a better grasp of the conditions at the new home ground now, PBKS will be expecting their top-order to pull up their socks if they were to put their campaign back on track before it turns into another season of what-ifs.
