IPL-2024: Mumbai Indians To Lock Horns With Kolkata Knight Riders in Mumbai: MI opt to bowl
Today, Mumbai Indian will lock horns with Kolkata Knight Riders at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai this evening. Mumbai Indians have won the toss and have opted to field.
In IPL Cricket, today Mumbai Indians will lock horns with Kolkata Knight Riders at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. It will start at 7.30 this evening. Kolkata Knight Riders will be looking to inch closer to the playoffs with another victory.
For Mumbai Indians, the race to the IPL playoffs seems lost even though they have five more games to play. In the points table, Mumbai Indians stand at the ninth spot and Kolkata Knight Riders at the second position.
Two Englishmen with identical initials – JB and JB – could have altered the fate of Kolkata Knight Riders’ season. Had it not been for the extraordinary centuries by Jos Buttler (107 not out) of Rajasthan Royals and Jonny Bairstow (108 not out) of Punjab Kings, the Knight Riders might have secured their playoff spot by now. However, they succumbed to a record-breaking chase (262 for 2) against Punjab and failed to defend a formidable 222 against the Royals, leaving them jostling for a place in the final four.
With a need for two victories from their remaining five games, the Knight Riders stand on the brink of playoffs but still with much work to do to seal it. Moreover, facing Mumbai Indians twice, against whom they’ve historically struggled, especially at the Wankhede, poses a difficult challenge. Despite maintaining the No 2 position consistently since the start of the IPL, securing two wins in their final five matches presents both an opportunity as well as a challenge. Their fate remains uncertain.
Reflecting the uncertainty of the team’s fate of reaching the play-offs, KKR’s assistant coach Abhishek Nayar said, “I wish I could tell you that 16 is good or 14 is good, but we never know. I think this is a competition which is one of the toughest in the world. It’s two-month long. And it’s not so much about how you play the first half, but it’s also as important to play the second. So just in terms of points, we’ve seen teams that have been at the bottom of the table do really well against table toppers. So it’s very hard to say if this is going to be safe and this is enough. I think the more the merrier for any team.”
The Knight Riders’ batting has exploded spectacularly this season, with Phil Salt and Sunil Narine providing platforms for formidable totals. However, their bowling hasn’t quite matched up, despite the presence of the irresistible Mitchell Starc, IPL’s most expensive buy (INR 24.75 crore).
“I believe our bowling could have performed better. ‘Below par’ wouldn’t be the term I’d use,” Nayar remarked, coming to the defence of the Australian pace bowler, who has managed a less-than-impressive economy rate of over 11, managing just seven wickets across eight games. Starc would be a fitting match-up for Rohit Sharma at the top of the order of MI. The Mumbai Indians opener has got out five times to left-arm pacers this season and the Aussie would be an ideal candidate to exploit the situation there, if there were to be one.
Mumbai Indians have nothing to lose as they can reach a maximum of 14 points in the best-case scenario (of winning the remaining four games), an unlikely proposition for earning a knockout berth. It will, however, be another test for skipper Hardik Pandya, who has avoided bowling all four overs in all games (he bowled out his quota only in three of the 10 games he played), to prove his full fitness. But with nothing to lose, they can dangerously be the party-poopers for the Knight Riders, who have been one of the better teams this IPL season.
Squads:
Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: Philip Salt(w), Sunil Narine, Rinku Singh, Shreyas Iyer(c), Venkatesh Iyer, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Suyash Sharma, Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Dushmantha Chameera, Allah Ghazanfar, Sakib Hussain, Sherfane Rutherford, Chetan Sakariya, Nitish Rana, Srikar Bharat
Mumbai Indians Squad: Ishan Kishan(w), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya(c), Nehal Wadhera, Tim David, Mohammad Nabi, Gerald Coetzee, Piyush Chawla, Jasprit Bumrah, Nuwan Thushara, Naman Dhir, Shams Mulani, Dewald Brevis, Kumar Kartikeya, Luke Wood, Shreyas Gopal, Harvik Desai, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Shivalik Sharma, Anshul Kamboj, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka
