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Match Preview: Mumbai Indians v Kings XI Punjab - IPL 2017

Thursday 11 May 2017

Match details

May 11, 2017, 08:00pm local time (02:30pm GMT)

As their do or die run to get into the top four continues, the Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) have a chance to get the better of the Mumbai Indians (MI) who are coming on the back of one of their poorer performances with the bat this season. However they face a tough task given the fact that Mumbai have lost only one of their six previous home games.

In an unusually slow wicket, Mumbai struggled to score runs against Hyderabad but that should change once they return to their fortress. They will also be hoping to get back Krunal Pandya from injury as they look to consolidate their position at the top of the table. After having had a fantastic start to the tournament, Nitish Rana hasn’t gone past 30 in any of his last five innings. It would not be bad a bad time for him to find top gear against a team that will be under pressure.

The Kings XI will be pleased with the way they fought back to win their last game against Kolkata and will be looking for a repeat of the same. Given skipper Glenn Maxwell’s free spirited approach to the game, they might excel under pressure rather than wilt. They found some welcome runs from Wriddhiman Saha but, it was an unlikely hero in Rahul Tewatia who won them the game. It remains to be seen if the Mohali wicket will require two spinners and Tewatia might not even get to play should conditions be pace friendly.

Recent Form

KXIP – WLWWL
MI – LWWLW

Likely XI’s

Krunal Pandya should slot back in for Karn Sharma, if fit.

MI– 1 Lendl Simmons, 2 Parthiv Patel (wk), 3 Nitish Rana, 4 Rohit Sharma (c), 5 Kieron Pollard,
6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya/ Karn Sharma, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Mitchell McClenaghan, 10 Lasith Malinga, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

T Natarajan could come back in for Swapnil Singh.

KXIP – 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Shaun Marsh, 3 Glenn Maxwell (c), 4 Manan Vohra, 5 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 6 Axar Patel, 7 Rahul Tewatia, 8 Matt Henry, 9 Mohit Sharma, 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 T Natarajan

Trivia

• Rohit Sharma has 18 fifty plus scores batting at number four in the IPL. The next best is Subramanium Badrinath with nine
• Mitchell McClenaghan has delivered 102 dot balls this season and is third on the list of most dot balls bowled behind Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Rashid Khan
• Kings XI’s win against Kolkata Knight Riders in their previous game ended their streak of eight successive losses against the latter