The proposed ‘Rohit Sharma Stand’ is yet to come up at the Wankhede, but that did not stop Rohit Sharma from standing tall at his home venue on Sunday.
Rohit stood taller than his critics as he navigated his way out of an ordinary run-scoring form to remain unbeaten on 76 off 45 balls as the Mumbai Indians made a mockery of a 177-run target, winning against Chennai Super Kings by nine wickets and as many as 26 balls to spare.
While Rohit rediscovered his touch with some silken strokes, Suryakumar Yadav was busy doing his type of things as he plundered 68 not out off 30 balls to bulldoze past the CSK attack. Surya, fondly called “SKY”, smashed two consecutive sixes off Matheesha Pathirana to bring up the winning runs. That’s quite
a statement.
Mumbai hit a total of 12 sixes, with 11 from Rohit and Surya.
Dubbed as the ‘Classico’ of the IPL, this Mumbai Indians-CSK match turned out to be an absolutely one-sided affair. CSK, once again, were ordinary with the bat despite fifties from Shivam Dube (50 off 32 balls) and Ravindra Jadeja (53 not out off 35 balls), and 176/5 was a below-par score at a high-scoring ground.
Mumbai continued their ascendancy with their fourth victory of the season and are now just two points behind the top-five teams, all of whom are on 10 points.
Contrasts in bowling
Nothing seems to be working for CSK as they slumped to their sixth defeat of the
season.
Their batting is in tatters, but their bowling, before this game, hadn’t been as bad. But even the bowling unit faltered on Sunday.
The Mumbai batters hogged the spotlight with their scintillating strokeplay, but it’s the bowling of the two teams that magnified the difference between them.
Watching how Mumbai’s Mitchell Santner made life difficult for his batters, CSK captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni chose Ravichandran Ashwin as the Impact Player. Mumbai played with only one specialist spinner in Santner, CSK had three — Noor Ahmad, Jadeja and Ashwin.
But while Santner shone bright, conceding just 4.33 runs per over, the trio of
CSK spinners failed to have an impact. Ashwin was the best of the lot with an economy of 6.25, but Noor, who has been among the top wicket-takers in IPL 2025, gave away 12
runs per over. Jadeja cost 9.33 runs an over.
One also wondered what the thinking was behind Dhoni’s ploy of withholding Pathirana till the 14th over of the Mumbai innings. Yes, Pathirana is a good death bowler, but if a master tactician like Dhoni thought he could stretch Mumbai’s chase till the death overs even after how Rohit and Surya batted, CSK have really tied themselves up in knots. Pathirana’s yorkers could have been of better use earlier to stall Mumbai’s charge.
Speaking of captaincy, even Mumbai skipper Hardik took a few debatable calls. He did not let the highly impressive Santner finish his quota of overs and gave Jasprit Bumrah the ball only in the ninth over of the CSK innings.
