Rejuvenated after a week’s break, Mumbai Indians will look to continue their rampaging run when they take on the formidable Sunrisers Hyderabad in an IPL clash in Visakhapatnam on Sunday.
On a roll after three successive wins against Punjab, Kolkata and Pune respectively, Mumbai got a welcome break for a week and will be rearing to go against the Sunrisers, who notched up a comfortable five-wicket win over Gujarat Lions on Friday.
Both Hyderabad and Mumbai are positioned midway in the points table with 10 points each, having won five matches out of 8 and 9 respectively.
The last time the two teams faced each other on April 18, it was the Sunrisers who had the last laugh by registering a seven-wicket win with 15 balls to spare and the Mumbai side will be itching for a revenge when they meet their rivals at Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium.
Both Mumbai and Hyderabad have been driven by the batting prowess of their respective skippers Rohit Sharma and David Warner, who have proven to be the run-machines for their teams with a total of 383 runs and 410 runs respectively so far in IPL-9.
For Mumbai, Ambati Rayudu and Parthiv Patel have stepped up whenever their skipper has failed, whereas for Hyderabad, Shikhar Dhawan has taken the responsibility of guiding their batting unit apart from Warner.
Australian all-rounder Moises Henriques too has proved to be an important cog in SRH’s wheels with some crucial contributions.
Hyderabad also now have the services of Yuvraj Singh, who made his IPL-9 debut last night after recovering from an ankle injury and though he did little on Friday, the man who has got the record of six sixes in an over can turn any match on its head and remains a dangerous customer.
Interestingly, both Mumbai and Hyderabad have depended on their pace battery when it comes to restricting their oppositions.
While New Zealand’s Mitchell McClenaghan has led the Mumbai attack, claiming 13 wickets so far to be placed second in the top-wicket takers’ list, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has snapped 12 scalps to get the job done for Hyderabad side.
Among others, Jasprit Bumrah and Tim Southee have taken 11 and 7 wickets respectively to be the next best bowlers for Mumbai. Similarly, Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman (10 wickets) has proved to be an asset for Hyderabad and Barinder Sran (six wickets) too has chipped in.
However, in the spin department, Mumbai has done better than Hyderabad with old warhorse Harbhajan Singh (5 wickets) and the brother duo of Hardik and Krunal Pandya (three wickets each) contributing for their team.
Compared to that, Hyderabad spinners — Karn Sharma, A Ashish Reddy, Deepak Hooda and Bipul Sharma have not been able to make much of an impact.
The Teams (from):
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (C), Parthiv Patel, Hardik Pandya, Jos Buttler, Mitchell McClenaghan, Ambati Rayudu, Kieron Pollard, Harbhajan Singh, Jagadeesha Suchith, Tim Southee, Jasprit Bumrah, Shreyas Gopal, R Vinay Kumar, Corey Anderson, Unmukht Chand, Marchant de Lange, Siddhesh Lad, Kishore Kamath, Krunal Pandya, Deepak Punia, Nitish Rana, Jitesh Sharma, Nathu Singh, Akshay Wakhare, Martin Guptill.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner (capt), Ashish Reddy, Ricky Bhui, Bipul Sharma, Trent Boult, Ben Cutting, Shikhar Dhawan, Moises Henriques, Deepak Hooda, Siddarth Kaul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Abhimanyu Midtun, Eoin Morgan, Mustafizur Rahman, Ashish Mehra, Naman Ojha, Vijay Shanker, Karn Sharma, Barinder Sran, T Suman, Aditya Tare, Kane Williamson and Yuvraj Singh.
Match starts 4pm (IST).
