In their matchup with Punjab Kings, Mumbai Indians hope to join the ten-point traffic jam
The field of playoff candidates for the IPL 2023 was expanded on Sunday thanks to two teams’ dramatic 200+ target chases.
Aside from Mumbai Indians, who are just outside of that group with eight points and a game remaining, five teams with identical records—five wins from nine games—ranging from No. 2 to No. 6 on the table are separated only by net run rate. Punjab Kings are one of those teams. They are one of five teams.
On Wednesday, Kings will play Mumbai for the second time this year in what appears to be a matchup of evenly matched teams with comparable strengths and shortcomings.
Both teams have powerful batting lineups that play aggressively from the get-go, and both have some of the worst bowling assaults in the league.
This season, Mumbai and Kings both have the worst average and third-worst economy rates. Mumbai also has the worst economy rate of any team.
Their first encounter went exactly as expected. Prior to Arshdeep Singh’s dismissal of a hot-shot Suryakumar Yadav in the 18th over of the chase, Kings had set a target of 215, and Mumbai were making good progress toward it.
Both that meeting and the one scheduled for Wednesday might have gone either way. If you intend to visit Mohali, just make sure to pack an umbrella so you can protect yourself from heavy rain and other potential hazards.
In Kings’ most recent game against CSK, Harpreet Brar participated, but he was not given the opportunity to bowl or bat because the lineup was heavily stacked with left-handed players.
It’s possible that it will occur once more if Mumbai’s left-handers spend a lot of time in the middle, but Kings have Sikandar Raza to oppose them and value having the assurance of Brar’s hitting skills lower in the order.
Shikhar Dhawan, Atharva Taide, and Sam Curran are the three left-handers anticipated to be in Kings’ top order, therefore Mumbai may decide to bring in the offspinner Hrithik Shokeen to oppose them.
By far, the poorest spin-bowling squad in IPL 2023 has been Kings. Their spinners have taken the fewest wickets (12) of any team, have the lowest average (51.26), the second-worst economy rate (8.75), and the poorest economy rate (only better than Royal Challengers Bangalore’s 9.24). Delhi Capitals is far and by the weakest team in terms of average.
This is partially because of the spinners’ poor performance in Mohali, where they have averaged 33.69 runs per game while giving up 8.39 runs per over.
Only Guwahati (34.62) and Bengaluru (34.56) had worse spinner averages than this season, while only Bengaluru (9.28), Ahmedabad (8.86), Kolkata (8.85), and Guwahati (8.39) have worse or comparable economy rates.
Rahul Chahar’s IPL season has been his poorest in terms of wicket-taking. In contrast to his previous five seasons, during which he averaged in the 20s, this year he has only taken three wickets in 186 balls while averaging 84.33.
Ishan Kishan was struck twice by four balls that Arshdeep bowled to him in T20 matches.
The third- and fourth-best death-overs (17-20) strike rates of all hitters who have faced at least 24 balls in this phase during IPL 2023 belong to Jitesh Sharma (220.00) and Tim David (214.54), respectively. Only MS Dhoni (225.00) and Vijay Shankar (290.00) have performed better.
Mumbai likely XII: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Ishan Kishan (wk), 3 Cameron Green, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Tim David, 7 Nehal Wadhera, 8 Piyush Chawla, 9 Jofra Archer, 10 Hrithik Shokeen/Kumar Kartikeya, 11 Riley Meredith/Jason Behrendorff, 12 Arshad Khan
Kings likely XII: 1 Prabhsimran Singh, 2 Shikhar Dhawan (capt), 3 Atharva Taide, 4 Liam Livingstone, 5 Sam Curran, 6 Jitesh Sharma (wk), 7 M Shahrukh Khan, 8 Sikandar Raza, 9 Harpreet Brar, 10 Kagiso Rabada, 11 Rahul Chahar, 12 Arshdeep Singh