Suryakumar Yadav (52 off 36) scored a scintillating half-century to help Mumbai Indians reach 161/4 against Kolkata Knight Riders in an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 match at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune on Wednesday.
At 55 for 3 in 11 overs, Mumbai were in trouble but Suryakumar played a solid innings with Tilak Verma (38 off 27) to help his team post a respectable total. He added 83 runs for the fourth wicket.
“I think it’s a good score on the board. The wicket is still sticky and I think our bowlers can take advantage of that. We decided to go with a timeout after 13 overs, wanted to plan that we How to proceed, and that’s exactly what happened,” said Suryakumar, who is making a comeback to cricket after an injury.
“I just wanted to spend some time in the middle, do bowling work, play some 15-16 deliveries and then go after bowling. According to me 161 wins total. I haven’t found any dew, it will be sticky and we are confident of defending it.”
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Umesh Yadav dismissed skipper Rohit Sharma to give KKK their first breakthrough in the third over of the match. The wicket brought debutant Dewald Brevis to the crease. He also looked in solid touch against the aggressive Umesh and his stroke-play brought some momentum to Mumbai’s innings and reached 35/1 after 6 overs.
But Brevis (29 off 19) hit a six off Varun Chakravarthy’s first ball, but the shot was followed by three dots. Brevis missed on the 5th ball of the over and Billings hit Belles with a whip.
Suryakumar, playing his first match of the season, then went to the crease with opener Ishan Kishan. With the run-rate falling with each passing over and pressure on Kishan building up, the southpaw’s struggling innings came to an end after Cummins was dismissed for a short ball.
Taking full advantage of a dropped catch by Ajinkya Rahane, Tilak Verma hit some bold shots and gave Mumbai some momentum while Suryakumar also complimented him for hitting some timely boundaries. Both Suryakumar and Verma kept the scoreboard ticking and helped MI cross the 100-run mark in the 17th over of the innings.
Since then, there has been no looking back for Suryakumar and Verma, who scored 17 and 14 runs in the 17th and 18th overs respectively. On the first ball of the 20th over, Suryakumar was dismissed after hitting a fine half-century but Kieron Pollard fired a spectacular firework by dismissing Cummins for three sixes.
(with inputs from agencies)
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