Mumbai boys fought well as a team, but after the full-of-twist 23rd match of Tata IPL 2020 – the blues have agonized for their fifth loss on the trot. Punjab came out victorious by 12 runs. At different junctions of the match, the target seemed very chasable, particularly till Brevis and Varma were on the crease. Rohit Sharma, the MI skipper, has said a few run-outs ‘cost them’ the match. The Punjab bowlers, however, significantly have made the difference in the close fight. Now they have climbed to the third position of the table with six points after five matches.
Most fantasy cricket fans play whenever Mumbai Indians are playing as it’s a team with a huge following. But despite the tough fight they put up, the team did not win. Fantasy cricket is a virtual platform where players can create their own team based on the players from the two teams playing on the field, in this case Mumbai Indians and Punjab Kings. You can accumulate points based on how the players perform in a real match.
The first over of MI innings found Rohit Sharma edging a full-length outside-off delivery; a big hit came after it at the last ball of Arora’s over. Rabada was elegantly hammered by Sharma again on the next over, but the entertaining show was off with a top edge on Rabada’s delivery. After completing his 10,000 runs with another six, he was caught at fine leg boundary on the fourth over. Ishan Kishan’s dismissal followed this, and he was caught behind while defending a full-length delivery by Arora.
As Sharma and Kishan departed, Brevis and Tilak started dealing with attacking Punjab. In the sixth over, Arshdeep Singh was being stepped out and smashed to get back-to-back boundaries for Brevis. The same happened with Odean Smith at the seventh over – he was pulled by Brevis through a deep square leg boundary.
Varma, by then, was rotating and offering the strike to Brevis, but from the eighth over, he also came on the charge to cut Livingston through point. The next over saw Brevis being brutally beautiful; four massive sixes followed a boundary at the second ball of the over! Mumbai was gradually coming back at the contest as lofting, slog-sweeping, and tossing back-arm powered shots of Brevis brought 29 runs from a single over.
The strategic break was, however, not initially fruitful. On the next over, Verma hammered a boundary followed by an over-boundary to get 13 runs! The same happened to Odean Smith, as Verma was joining the party by hailing Smith with another maximum. The spectacular partnership, which was dragging MI back at the match, ended. Odean Smith got the breakthrough by clearing Brevis at his 49. The way Brevis and Verma were batting, and the score was getting a great leap forward by every single over, the target seemed quite chaseable.
After a barren twelfth over, Surya Kumar Yadav flicked the ball down the mid-wicket on the final delivery of the next over. In the meantime, Verma was halfway down the pitch, and he was run out. Yadav and Pollard, on the 14th and 15th over, stroked a few boundaries, but it was pretty visible that PBKS was back at the dominant position. The sixteenth over saw Chahar dominating and not allowing anything but singles. Pollard was out on the next over, and Yadav, consistently playing quality cricket at every match, hammered a couple of sixes. However, that could not have saved the match for MI because the penultimate and the final overs dismissed Yadav, Unadkat, Bumrah, and Mills to wrap them up at 186 for nine.
MI, by their fifth win, has moved closer to elimination. PBKS was anticipated to be the probable winner. But instead, they have stepped onto the first four.
