Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL

The Mumbai Indians have pulled off another upset as they took down the table-toppers Gujarat Titans by five runs. After a long time, MI captain Rohit Sharma had a blistering start to the game with Ishan Kishan finding some form. The Mumbai batting performed well in spurts as they posted a total of 177. Similarly, Gujarat also had a great start as their openers had put up 106 in 12 overs. But the Titans faltered towards the end and lost their third game of the tournament. 

Changes in the points table

After the 51st match of the IPL, Mumbai Indians are tenth on the table with four points from ten games. They also have a net run rate of -0.725. Whereas the Gujarat Titans are first on the table with 16 points from 11 games with a net run rate of +0.120.

Today’s Matchup

In Saturday’s doubleheader, Punjab Kings will take on the Rajasthan Royals at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Whereas, the Lucknow Super Giants will face Kolkata Knight Riders for the first time in the history of the IPL in the second match of the day.

What did the captains say?

Wining captain Rohit Sharma was elated with his team’s performance and said, “It was pretty tight towards the back end. Very satisfying, something we were looking for all this while. Luck has to turn at some stage, we'll take that win with both hands. Credit to everyone. We were 15-20 runs short. The way we started, we got stuck in the middle. They bowled well in that situation. Tim David finished things really well. We knew it would be tough, but we held our nerves and that was good to see. A lot depends on how the game is going, who's bowling well on the day.”

“Luckily I had few resources so I could change-up. They bowled slower balls and it was difficult to hit. We wanted to do the same. We did that pretty well, it was a great effort from the bowling unit. We didn't want to look too far ahead. Even today, we didn't play our best cricket, a lot of credit to the bowlers at the back-end. It's important to back the skills you have. Sams was under the pump in a couple of games but I know the quality he has. It's important to back those guys. We are trying to maintain the same squad how much ever possible. Daniel Sams was brilliant”, Rohit Sharma concluded.

Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya talked about the missed opportunities from the game and said, “We'll take 9 runs in the last over on any given day, but the two run-outs didn't help us. In T20 cricket you can't keep losing back-to-back wickets, it pushes you back. It's one of the games where we ended on the losing side. We kind of played 19.2 or 19.3 overs of good cricket, but losing wickets didn't help us like I said before. At one point I thought they would post more than 200, but our bowlers did well to restrict them.”