Press Trust of India
Hyderabad, May 17: Mumbai Indians (MI) crushed SunRisers Hyderabad (MI) by nine wickets in a must-win final league game to sail into play-offs of IPL-VIII at the Uppal Stadium here Sunday. MI have jumped to the second spot and will now face table toppers Chennai Super Kings in the Qualifier 1 at Mumbai Tuesday.
Chasing a modest target of 114 runs, both Parthiv Patel (51 n o, 37b, 9×4) and Lendl Simmons (48, 44b, 4×4, 2×6) played freely. They stitched together a 106-run stand for the first wicket. While the wicket-keeper got to his half century, Simmons missed out on the milestone by just two runs after giving a catch to Shikhar Dhawan off Karn Sharma’s bowling. Rohit Sharma however finished off the chase with a six.
Earlier SRH were put on the back foot straightway by MI as the hosts lost both their openers Dhawan (1) and skipper David Warner (6) early. While Dhawan’s off stump was rattled by Lasith Malinga (2/17), Warner top-edged a Mitchell McClenaghan’s (3/16) well-directed short ball to Kieron Pollard.
SRH failed to get going from that point as McClenaghan dismissed Eoin Morgan in the sixth over. Moises Henriques (11) and KL Rahul (25) stitched together a partnership of 28 runs for the fourth wicket but Jagadeesha Suchith (2/14) and Harbhajan Singh (1/18) took over from where their pacers had left off by getting the wickets of both and wicket keeper Naman Ojha departed a naught leaving the host reeling at 61 for the loss of six wickets.
After that Ashish Reddy (17) and Karn Sharma (15) first struck a partnership of 23 runs for the seventh wicket and then Praveen Kumar and Dale Steyn (19) added 22 runs for the last wicket to take the total past the 100-run mark.
In between Malinga and McClenaghan came back for their ultimate spells and got the wickets of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Karn Sharma. Steyn was very much handy with the bat as he swung around and secured three boundaries in the process to give a boost to the SRH scoring rate but in the end it was not enough.
Brief scores
SRH 113 (KL Rahul 25; Mitchell McClenaghan 3/16, Jagadeesha Suchith 2/14, Lasith Malinga 2/17) lost to MI 114 for one (Parthiv Patel 51 no, Lendl Simmons 48) by nine wickets.
