(Cricket news) The Lucknow Super Giants defeated the Mumbai Indians by five runs on Tuesday night at the Ekana stadium in Lucknow, taking a significant step towards playoff qualifying. In their opening innings of play, Lucknow amassed a strong total of 177 runs. 

Marcus Stoinis scored 89 runs (47b, 4×4, 8×6) and adding to the total retired hurt player Krunal Pandya scored 49 runs (42b, 1×4, 1×6). Jason Bherendorff took 2 wickets in the power play to give MI a good start. Other MI bowlers were not up to the mark as Piyush Chawla took only 1 wicket in his 3 overs. 

Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma’s opening partnership of 90 runs gave Mumbai a strong start to their innings. However, they kept dropping wickets at regular intervals and were unable to gather any momentum, therefore they were unable to successfully chase the mark down. Tim David raised some hopes, but Mohsin Khan’s outstanding last over gave Lucknow the crucial two points. 

Ishan Kishan scored 59 runs (39b, 8×4, 1×6) and Rohit Sharma scored 37 runs (25b, 1×4, 3×6). Playing as a finishers role Tim David scored 32 runs (19b, 1×4, 3×6) but still his team fell short of 5 runs and MI lost the game. For LSG their impact substitute had a great impact as he took 2 wickets in 4 over and gave 40 runs. Ravi Bishnoi the spinner for LSG also took 2 wickets of 4 overs and gave only 26 runs.   

But for LSG the best bowler was Mohsin Khan as he bowled to crucial overs in the death and won the game for his side. Mohsin Khan gave only 14 runs in 2 overs he bowled in the death overs. He took 1 wicket and gave 26 runs in his 3 overs spell. 

This result meant that LSG will take MI’s place in the table which was 3rd and MI will go 4th on LSG’s place. Both teams have played 13 games in total but LSG have 15 points and MI have 14 points with both the teams having only one game to play. 

LSG has won 7 games out of their 13 and lost 5 and drew one game resulting in their 15 points. MI has won 7 games and lost 6 games out of their 13 games played. MI have a bad run rate which might be the reason they might not qualify for the playoffs. RCB has 2 games in hand and are in 5th place behind MI and if they win their next match they will equal their points with MI.

MI will play SRH in their one remaining game and LSG will play KKR in the one game they have in hand. Whereas RCB will play SRH and GT in the last games left for them. 

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