The Australian captain Michael Clarke made an impressive IPL debut for Pune Warriors against Deccan Chargers at Cuttack on May Day and and he will look forward to making a bigger impact against Mumbai Indians at the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium here on Thursday.
Clarke was among three Australian players — the others being Chennai Super Kings's Michael Hussey and Rajasthan Royals's Shane Watson — who turned out for their IPL sides within days of the national side's engagement in the West Indies.
All three are important members of their respective sides with Watson and Hussey featuring in championship-winning teams in the past.
It can be assumed that Clarke was sent in to open the innings with Manish Pandey to take on the in-form Chargers fast bowler Dale Steyn on Tuesday.
With Warriors needing 187 to win the match, Clarke made a 31-ball-41, put on 90 for the second wicket with skipper Sourav Ganguly and raised hopes of a successful chase.
The Warriors, eventually, went down by 14 runs and suffered their sixth defeat — and fourth in a row — in ten games.
After being in the top half of the league for a brief while, the Warriors are now seventh with eight points — ahead only of the bottom placed Chargers and Kings XI Punjab.
The Warriors have lost three matches in a row after a shock victory over Delhi Daredevils at the Kotla ten days ago.
But with six more games to play, though, the Warriors will still fancy their chances of making the play-offs and heavily depend on the likes of Clarke, Steve Smith and Robin Uthappa to break the sequences of losses at their home ground at Gahunje village.
In the topsy-turvy world of Twenty20 cricket, the Warriors have endured the fluctuating fortunes in the form of the players and hence results.
They successfully defended 129 runs against the MI on a dry pitch at the Wankhede stadium in the first week of the league.
Subsequently the likes of Jesse Ryder, Smith and the bowling combination in Ashok Dinda, Marlon Samuels, Murali Karthik and Rahul Sharma played their roles to help notch up wins against Kings XI Punjab and Chennai Super Kings at home and against Daredevils at the Kotla.
Thereafter, it was thrashed by the Daredevils at home and it lost home and away to the Chargers. The time has come for Ganguly's team to show some pluck just as it did while chasing 186 against the Chargers.
MI will keen to avenge the 28-run defeat by the Warriors. Tendulkar is back in the ranks and at the top of the order, and the likes of Rohit Sharma and Ambati Rayudu have also shown signs of being a little more focused.
Lasith Malinga proved his worth with a four-wicket haul and Munaf Patel and R.P. Singh played adequate supporting roles against the Chargers.
More significantly, Harbhajan Singh returned to wicket-taking ways and MI collected two big points against the Chargers.
But Kieron Pollard is recovering from a shoulder injury and is unlikely to be fielded against the Warriors.
“He can't play for a week; he's a quality player and a big loss for us. Herschelle Gibbs broke a finger, but he's recovered,” said Robin Peterson. On Wednesday, MI announced that it has replaced Australian Mitchell Johnson with West Indian all-rounder Dwayne Smith.
