Mumbai eager to salvage pride against desperate Sunrisers

Two teams with absolutely contrasting perspectives will be entering the fray on an electric Tuesday night as an ailing Mumbai Indians will be hitting the deck against the Sunrisers in a battle of pride and existence. Mumbai has already crashed out of this year’s playoffs after a sore showdown in the tournament and will be duking it out with the Orange Army, hoping to salvage some pride.

The Sunrisers are hanging in the tournament barely by the scraps and even if they do win their remaining fixtures, their hope for making the knock-outs are pretty dim. They started their tournament on a low but would shortly gain momentum as the tournament would progress as they scripted 5 wins on the trot, making the fans believe that this can be the year for the Phoenix to rise again. Sadly, ever since their fifth win, they hit a slump like no other and are still scrambling for that sixth win.

Mumbai, on the contrary, are all over the place and their campaign has been plagued by some predominant inconsistency with barely any friction to arrest the decline. However, recent times have seemed to be a bit more kind to them unlike the initial days of IPL 2022 as they have won three of their last four fixtures.

This contest will see both the teams baring down their arsenal, considering the fact that for Mumbai, this season needs to end on a high and they would be hoping that they can take as much confidence they can take from the last couple of games while the Sunrisers would be hoping to lunge for one final time with the hope of making the playoffs.

Venue Watch:

Wankhede will be playing host to this contest between Mumbai and Hyderabad as another batting-friendly surface awaits us all. The boundaries are on the shorter side with the surface being a flat one. The average score batting first in IPL 2022 at Wankhede has been a whopping 170 plus that clearly flags the fact that this is going to be a batter’s dance. The last contest played at the stadium witnessed the Super Kings struggling to break free. However, the Titans made quick work of the total as they would run amok against a struggling CSK bowling lineup and would win with seven wickets to spare.

Ideal result for RCB:

The upshot of this contest won’t really impinge RCB’s chances of making the cut for the playoffs as SRH will have to make it 2 out of 2 in their last couple of fixtures and win the games by big margin to qualify with the fate of the other contests being a significant factor. However, a loss for SRH will be knocking them out of the hunt for the playoffs, reducing the number of teams vying for that elusive fourth spot.

Squads:

Sunrisers Hyderabad:

Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad, Umran Malik, Washington Sundar, Nicholas Pooran, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Kartik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal, Jagadeesha Suchith, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Romario Shepherd, Sean Abbott, R Samarth, Shashank Singh, Saurabh Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Phillips, Fazalhaq Farooqi.

Mumbai Indians:

Rohit Sharma, Kieron Pollard, Suryakumar Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishan Kishan, Ramandeep Singh, Rahul Buddhi, Hrithik Shokeen, Arjun Tendulkar, Aryan Juyal, Fabian Allen, Dewald Brevis, Basil Thampi, M Ashwin, Jaydev Unadkat, Mayank Markande, Tilak Varma, Sanjay Yadav, Riley Meredith, Mohd Arshad Khan, Anmolpreet Singh

Match Details:

Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Mumbai Indians

Venue: Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai

Date: 17th May 2022

Time: 7:30 PM IST