The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2014 has seen the worst start for Mumbai Indians team in their history of the tournament. It is a rare sight to see one of the best teams on paper to have gone 5 matches without a win. The fervour with which the IPL is watched, the fans of the Mumbai Indians have been disappointed game after game. However, there is good news for them. The Mumbai Indians won their first match today/Saturday the 3rd of May, against the Kings XI finally ending their losing streak.
The game was played at the Wankhede Stadium, home ground for the Mumbai Indians and they had a point to prove.
Kings XI chose to bat after winning the toss, which seemed like a bad idea until GJ Maxwell walked onto the pitch. Struggling at 2-24 in 3.3 overs, WP Saha and GJ Maxwell propelled the innings to 93 in 11.4 overs. The form with which Maxwell has come into the tournament showed on the pitch as he raced to 45 off just 26 balls until he was caught at long on giving away his wicket to Harbhajan Singh. The innings went on with small contributions from GJ Bailey and DA Miller scoring 15 and 16 respectively. It is Saha's not out innings of 59 at a strike rate of 125.53, which led Kings XI to a decent total of 168-5 in 20 overs. Harbhajan Singh went for a few runs but ended his spell with two wickets under his belt.
The Mumbai Indians started their chase reasonably getting the required runs per over but kept losing their wickets cheaply. CM Gautam, RG Sharma and CJ Anderson all got out in their 30s putting pressure on the batsmen to come. What seemed like one of the easier targets to chase down suddenly became mountain to climb. Kings XI were fairly poised after getting two new batsmen on the pitch with more than 10 runs per over required.
However, before they realized what hit them, KA Pollard (SR. 233.33) and AP Tare (SR. 266.66) took the match away from them and won with 5 balls to spare. Even the Australian star MG Johnson who bowled the 19th over could not stop the onslaught and gave away 20 runs off his over. R Dhawan bowled a decent spell of 23 for 2 in 4 overs but to no avail.
Its only so long you can contain a team like the Mumbai Indians and it is tough luck for Kings XI Punjab who had till now won 5 games in a row, to have been on the receiving end. There are a lot of areas Mumbai needs to work on but they will go back with a lot of positives especially after the way the match ended. It might be exactly what they needed to kick start their tournament.
Let's hope for the Mumbai Indian fans that the win has not come too late for their team and that it results in a turnaround for them in the tournament.
