The Holkar Cricket Stadium, with its lights switched on, presented a lovely sight from up above the sky as the aircraft descended on the Indore Airport on Wednesday night. A young woman showed her little son the ground and said cheerfully, “Mumbai Indians will be playing Kings XI Punjab there.”
In a much less enthusiastic tone, she added, “But the team keeps on losing.”
This has indeed been a season of disappointment for the loyal MI fans like her. To say that Rohit Sharma’s men have underperformed would be an understatement.
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With just two wins from eight games, they are placed right at the bottom of the table.
A year ago, it was in a much happier frame of mind that they came to this historic city in central India that is also known for its food, especially of the street variety. They had arrived here having scored five back-to-back wins. They made it six in a row and went on to win the title.
Now they are staring at elimination, as they take on an in-form host.
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And the KXIP men will play the first of their four matches at their second home feeling refreshed after a week’s break.
Key men like Chris Gayle, who has an unreal-looking average of 126 and an unsurprising strike-rate of 161.53 from his four matches, would be keen to resume his normal service of slaughtering the bowlers after spending the last few days enjoying seafood on the backwaters of Kerala.
He isn’t the only KXIP opener the rivals have had to worry about this season; K.L. Rahul too has been in sublime form, after hitting the IPL’s fastest fifty ever in his team’s first match.
Captain R. Ashwin has also been able to get the best out of his bowlers. Pacers Andrew Tye and Ankit Rajpoot and teenaged Afghan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman have been amongst the wickets and could pose problems for the inconsistent batting line-up of MI.
But Aaron Finch indicated his team was not going to take the three-time champion lightly. “They have a lot of match-winners with both the bat and the ball,” the hard-hitting Aussie batsman said.