Mumbai Indians in the past few seasons have seen this stage many a times where they needed to win each game to make it to the qualifiers and needed big wins to correct their negative run rates. They have come out smiling from such situations more often than not and today was again one such day. The match against the Daredevils was not going to be an easy one keeping in mind the how Delhi have performed this season but Mumbai never fail in believing themselves.
To start with, Delhi completely misread the pitch today. They dropped fast bowlers Shami and Coulter Nile to bring in spinners Tahir and Nadeem.
The pitch according to them was spinner friendly but turned out to be the opposite. Delhi won the toss and elected to field. Mumbai Opened with Rohit Sharma and Martin Guptill while the new ball was given to Shahbaz Nadeem. The first ball ball held up a bit and the second ball gripped, turned and bounced to beat Rohit Sharma`s edge. This was the moment when everybody thought that the Daredevils had pulled off a master stroke by playing a spin heavy side and this was also the moment when it all got over. The next 4 balls yielded 11 runs with a six and a four from Rohit and there was no looking back. Delhi was still not letting go as Mumbai raced to 45 for no loss in the 6 overs of powerplay.
The introduction of Amit Mishra in the 7 over yielded immediate results as he dismissed Rohit in the same over. DD would have thought to pull things back now but the arrival of Krunal Pandya changed everything around.
Pandya came, swung hard and finished at 86 runs from 37 balls including 6 sixes. Delhi was stunned. The trusted spiners were the main let down giving Pandya the opportunity to free his arms. DD`s decision had completely back fired as the 3 spinners combined to give 143 runs from their 12 overs while the 2 fast bowlers gave away just 57 in their 8 overs. The tactic had failed and Mumbai had breached their highest total for the season to finish at 206 for 4.
Delhi had chased 190 odd runs against RCB in of their previous matches but such instances are more of rarity than usual.
Delhi were never in the game as they kept losing the wickets at regular intervals with no real partnerships. The pressure of the rising asking rate was too much for the DD batsmen to absorb and they fell like nine pins. Quinton DeKock had started well though and was going strong for his 40 runs off 28 balls when a second consecutive umpiring blunder forced him to go back in the 10th over ending all hopes for the Daredevils. Pant and Morris tried but the target was way out of their reach. Finally Delhi folded for just 126 runs giving Mumbai a huge win by 80 runs boosting their run rate as well. Pandya starred with the ball as well picking 2 wickets for just 15 runs.
Mumbai now are 4th on the table and have to win their last match to qualify. Delhi have slipped down to 5th and will now have to win 2 out of their remaining 3 matches to make it to the qualifiers.