G Krishnan
Mumbai, April 12
The highest run-getter in IPL history and the Orange Cap holder this year, Virat Kohli, came a cropper against the world’s best pacer Jasprit Bumrah at the Wankhede Stadium here.
Despite Bumrah’s 5/21, Mumbai Indians allowed Royal Challengers Bengaluru to score 196/8, thanks to a late assault by Dinesh Karthik (53*, 5×4, 4×6).
MI brutally attacked the RCB bowlers, first openers Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan smashing them all over the ground before Suryakumar Yadav murdered them. Kishan raced to his first fifty of this edition in just 23 balls with five fours and four sixes. MI scored at a dozen an over in the Power Play, reaching 72/0 including 40 runs in two overs, 23 off Md Siraj in fourth over and 17 off Glenn Maxwell in the fifth.
Sharma (38, 24b, 3×4, 3×6) and Kishan (69, 39b, 7×4, 5×6) raised 101 in just 53 deliveries to put MI on the victory path, which was eventually claimed by seven wickets. Yadav toyed with the RCB bowling to score the joint fastest fifty by a Mumbai Indians batsman in IPL, in 17 balls, en route to his 19-ball 52 (5×4, 4×6) as MI won with 27 balls to spare, their second win in five outings.
Kohli struggled to get going, scoring only three singles in eight deliveries, none against Bumrah in the first two deliveries that he faced off the right-arm pacer. Off the third, Kohli took a wild swing and the resultant inside edge was collected well by wicketkeeper Kishan diving to his left. Kohli, who came into this match with 316 at 105.33, could hardly create an impression on the day. It was the fifth time Kohli was dismissed by Bumrah in IPL and the first at this venue.
Bumrah was easily the best bowler of the evening and in the league, with an economy rate of under six and picking up wickets almost every time he came on to bowl. After Kohli’s dismissal in his first over, he came back for his second over in the 11th over and gave away only four singles, when until then, the third-wicket pair of Faf du Plessis and Rajat Patidar were going after the bowlers Gerald Coetzee and Akash Madhwal.
Patidar pulled, lofted and slog swept for boundaries and went on to become the second RCB batsman this IPL to score a fifty in their six matches. Skipper du Plessis soon followed to this small milestone but the two were back in the dressing room soon after reaching their respective fifties.
While Coetzee bowled short and full tosses to leak easy boundaries, he dismissed Patidar, but not before he was pulled for two consecutive sixes by Patidar, miscuing a pull and top-edging to wicketkeeper for 50 (26b, 3×4, 4×6). Glenn Maxwell’s poor run continued and was leg before to leg-spinner Shreyas Gopal’s googly for a fourth-ball duck, the joint most zeroes in IPL with Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik (17 each). This was Gopal’s 50th IPL game, and Maxwell his 50th IPL victim.
Bumrah, playing his 125th IPL match, picked up two wickets in successive deliveries in his third and fourth overs, the 17th and 19th of the innings, to collect his second five-wicket bag in IPL. Bumrah finished with figures of 4-0-21-5, his second best figures after 5/10 against Kolkata Knight Riders in 2022. Bumrah removed the dangerous-looking du Plessis (61, 40b, 4×4, 3×6), caught at long-on, yorked Mahipal Lomror, bowled short for impact substitution Saurav Chauhan to pull to mid-wicket and forced Vyshak Vijaykumar to loft poorly to mid-off.
The RCB innings in the last five overs received a boost from overs bowled by Akash Madhwal and Coetzee with Karthik being amongst the runs. In the 16th over by Madhwal, he picked up four fours in the third man region, turning the face of the bat and picking the gaps and also edging once past the wicketkeeper.
Karthik was chiefly responsible in scoring RCB’s 66 runs in the last five overs despite Bumrah bowling two of these overs for just 14 runs and snaring four wickets. Madhwal went for 19 in each of 16th and 20th overs while Coetzee conceded 14 in the 18th.
