So far the Indian Premier League (IPL-V) has oscillated between the ordinary and spectacular.
A handful of batsmen have produced breathtaking displays, some noted fast and seam bowlers have made a bigger impact with lightning fast deliveries and plenty of variations in pace and the slow bowlers have shown cunning and craft on helpful surfaces.
Lately Albie Morkel, Jesse Ryder and Steve Smith have been in the forefront with stirring endeavours with the bat, but without doubt this has been an IPL in which the fast bowlers have dominated on all types of wickets and stolen the thunder from the batsmen.
Seen as an ‘IPL Derby Clash', the rival teams for Monday's match at the Wankhede Stadium — Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils — will largely depend on their seam attack of Lasith Malinga, Munaf Patel and Kieron Pollard (MI) and Morne Morkel, Umesh Yadav, Doug Bracewell and Irfan Pathan (DD).
The MI trio has captured 28 wickets while the DD foursome has half of that tally.
Interesting match-up
A full house at the ‘D' Road venue would expect a contest of sorts between the Daredevils captain Virender Sehwag and Malinga.
A little over a year ago in the ICC World Cup final, Malinga bowled his first spell like a true tearaway and silenced the jam-packed stadium by winning a leg-before appeal against Sehwag.
Since then, Malinga has won the contests between them hands down, dismissing Sehwag twice in the Commonwealth Bank series in Australia for 10 and 0.
Return of Tendulkar?
MI, placed second in the table after four matches (one more than the Daredevils), is hopeful of Sachin Tendulkar's return at the top of the batting order. After all he is MI's leading run getter with a collection of 1739.
His injury was the only disappointing news for MI after it beat CSK in the inaugural match on April 4. After ten days of medical attention, Tendulkar batted for almost an hour at the Wankhede on Saturday facing throw downs from video analyst Dhananjay.
While MI's seam attack has delivered admirable results, skipper Harbhajan Singh has run up a poor average of one for 101, with Rajasthan Royals' Owais Shah's hefty shots doing much of the damage (none for 43) to his bowling figures.
It would be interesting to see if MI will bring in either Thisara Perera, Australian Clint Mckay or South African left-arm spinner Robin Peterson for the out-of-form James Franklin.
The Daredevils batting line-up received a big boost with Kevin Pietersen and Mahela Jayawardene playing their part in their team's big eight wicket win against CSK at the Kotla. And now New Zealand captain Ross Taylor too has made himself available.
MI has won five matches out of the eight against the Daredevils; in fact the last four, two times at the Kotla and one each at the Brabourne Stadium and Wankhede.
