(Cricket news) SRH’s campaign hasn’t any type of form this season as they went on a 5 match winning streak after losing the first three matches in the tournament but are now on the back of 5 defeats in a row and their playoff hopes hanging by a thread. For MI they have nothing to lose knowing that if they win, they will dent SRH’s playoff hopes.
For SRH, they are still in contention for the playoffs even after five straight losses following five straight wins as it is purely down to their batting from Nos. 3 to 6. Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran have been the key players at those positions and Sunrisers average 35.5 per dismissal for those spots combined, the best among the teams in IPL 2022. Kane Williamson's form has been abysmal this season; his batting average of 18.9 this season and his strike rate of 92.9 is the fifth-worst by any player to have batted in ten innings in an IPL season. The SRH management need to make changes to their batting order as they need some fresh impetus in the batting department. In the bowling department, all the bowlers who were in form started conceding a lot of runs as they have conceded more than 175 in the previous matches. Washington Sundar and Shreyas Gopal will be key, both of whom have combined to dismiss Rohit Sharma four times in 37 balls.
MI would take confidence from their last match and hopefully rebuild next season but now they would want to end the tournament on a high. Very little of Tristan Stubbs could be seen against CSK as the management will likely continue to back him in the middle order, while young Tilak Verma continues to impress for MI this season. Rohit Sharma needs to get amongst the runs for MI this season as it will not only be good news for MI fans but also for the Indian cricket fans. In the bowling department, Jasprit Bumrah will be the key as he has had the better of Nicholas Pooran, dismissing the dangerous southpaw twice in nine balls, conceding only seven runs. Daniel Sams also proved his worth with a match winning spell in the last match.
Pitch and weather report: The Wankhede Stadium pitch has been the best batting pitch this season but has also seen pace and bounce up front with the new ball. Chasing sides have won six of the last eight matches at this venue. The temperature is going to hover around 30 degrees with no chance of rain as dew may play a part in the second innings.
Interesting facts:
- Rohit is yet to score 30+ in two consecutive innings in this calendar year in T20s and hasn't registered a 50+ score either in IPL
- SRH have used the fewest overs of spin this season
- MI and SRH are two of only three teams to use the same opening pair throughout the season.
- Abhishek Sharma averages above 30 or strikes at over 130 this season no one in the team does other than him.
- Mumbai have conceded 94 sixes, while Sunrisers have conceded 92 this season
- Jasprit Bumrah needs one wicket to become the first Indian fast bowler to take 250 wickets in T20 cricket
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Probable XI for SRH:
1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Kane Williamson (capt), 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Aiden Markram, 5 Nicholas Pooran (wk), 6 Washington Sundar, 7 Shashank Singh/Glenn Phillips, 8 Marco Jansen/Kartik Tyagi, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Umran Malik, 11 T Natarajan
Probable XI for MI:
1 Ishan Kishan (wk), 2 Rohit Sharma (capt), 3 Tilak Varma, 4 Tristan Stubbs, 5 Tim David, 6 Daniel Sams, 7 Hrithik Shokeen, 8 Ramandeep Singh, 9 Jasprit Bumrah, 10 Riley Meredith, 11 Kumar Kartikeya Singh
