IPL: Mumbai win by 8 wickets, knock Rajasthan out

AFTER their top-class show with the bat against Chennai Super Kings the other night in Abu Dhabi, supporters of Rajasthan Royals were hopeful of a turnaround by Sanju Samson’s side in the remaining games of the league stage.

But the Royals produced one of their worst performances with the bat in their very next game against defending champions Mumbai Indians at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Tuesday (5) to get hammered by 8 wickets and bow out of the race for the playoffs. Royals can still technically get into the last four but that would also require the results of a lot of matches going in their favour. The Royals are now placed seventh in the points table with 10 points from 13 games and a net run-rate of minus 0.7, the worst of all the four teams that are in the race for the playoffs.

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Coming back to Tuesday’s game, Mumbai skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to field first. Royals, who won the crown only in the opening year, had a good start with their openers Evin Lewis (24 off 19) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (12 off 9) taking them to 27 in less than four overs. But once the two departed with the team score at 41, the Royals slumped to lose their next seven wickets for only 41. They crawled to 90 for 9 in 20 overs, exactly 100 runs less than what they had made against Chennai last Saturday (2).

For Mumbai, three seamers shared the wickets between them with Australian Nathan Coulter-Nile taking 4 for 14, New Zealander James Neesham claiming 3 for 12 and India’s own Jasprit Bumrah 2 for 14.

Mumbai came out to bat keeping in mind the net run-rate and raced to the target with more than 11 overs to spare. In just 8.4 overs, they drove home losing only two wickets. Opener and wicket-keeper Ishan Kishan slammed 50 not out off 25 balls while Sharma made 22 off 13. Suryakumar Yadav made 13 off eight balls. For the Royals, Bangladeshi Mustafizur Rahman and Chetan Sakariya took one wicket each.

Coulter-Nile was adjudged the player of the match.

Mumbai are now at the sixth position in the points table with 12 points from 13 games. Kolkata Knight Riders also have the same points in the same number of games but are in fourth place due to a better net run-rate.