Mumbai Indians (MI) put a firm step forward in changing their wheel of fortune in this year’s IPL by coming out of their string of defeats with a resounding and convincing win over Chennai Super Kings (CSK), easily the most popular team in the tourney. The crowds at MCA Stadium, Pune were left disappointed with CSK’s loss.

Rohit Sharma, the under-fire captain of MI, called correctly during the toss and asked CSK to bat first, apparently realizing that CSK would successfully chase down any target if it is allowed to bat second. CSK struggled right from the first over. Watson departed in the fifth over after which Raina and Rayudu put on 70 runs for the second wicket before Rayudu fell for 46 in the 12 th over.

Dhoni and Raina added close to 50 when Dhoni’s mistimed a big hit to be out for 26 off 21 balls. Bravo and Billings fell in quick succession as Raina managed some good hits to take CSK’s score to 169 for five in 20 overs. Mitchell McClenaghan cramped CSK’s run-scoring spree in the middle overs and during the innings break, it was believed that CSK would have fallen short of the par score by 15-20 runs.

CSK, which was defending a below-par total at the MCA Stadium, Pune, couldn’t get any initial breakthrough as Suryakumar Yadav, who plays like his mentor Virender Sehwag in getting his hand-eye coordination right, added 69 runs in 10 overs for the first wicket with Evin Lewis.

Rohit promoted himself in the batting order by coming in at No.3 and started striking from thevery first ball. He hit the big shots when it mattered most. There was, however, huge drama till the 18 th over when the match was in balance with MI needing 22 of the last two overs. Contrary to what was expected, Dhoni threw the ball to Shardul Thakur and not to Dwayne Bravo. In the hindsight, this turned out to be an expensive miscalculation as Thakur was plundered for 17 runs in that over including four excellently timed boundaries hit by Rohit Sharma. The match had almost ended by then as MI wanted only five to win from the last over. Imran Tahir bowled the last over when Hardik Pandya hit the winning run off the fourth ball.

Earlier, CSK was also badly hit by the injury to its lead bowler Deepak Chahar, who had to leave soon after he commenced his third over. Dhoni conceded during the post-match presentation ceremony that the team might have scored 20-25 less runs. Rohit Sharma was declared the ‘Man of the Match’ for his amazing effort which helped MI take revenge on CSK for beating it in the Cup opener on 07 th April.

Despite the loss, CSK retained its top spot in points table while MI moved up by two spots to take the sixth spot ahead of RCB and DD who too have two wins each.

Brief scores: CSK 169/5 in 20 overs (Rayudu 46, Raina 75*, Dhoni 26, McClenaghan 2-26) lost to MI 170/2 in 19.4 overs (Suryakumar Yadav 44, Evin Lewis 47, Rohit Sharma 56*, Bravo 1-21)

Images Courtesty : IPLT20 BCCI