Mumbai Indians finally opened their account in the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League with a five-wicket win over Rajasthan Royals here on Saturday. Opting to field, MI restricted RR to 158 for six, despite a fine 52-ball 67 by Jos Buttler at the top. The second-highest scorer for RR was Ravichandran Ashwin (21 off 9 balls) who played a cameo to take RR past the 150-run mark.
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In reply, MI chased down the target in 19.2 overs with Suryakumar Yadav (51 off 39 balls) emerging as the top scorer. Yadav in the company of Tilak Varma (35) added 81 to keep MI in the hunt before Tim David (20) finished the job.
“We could have scored few more runs. Dew came in and it was tough to bowl as the ball was getting wet. We changed the ball as it was getting really wet. Different venues are playing in different ways. Batting first here was tough as it was two-paced. Few more runs with the bat would have helped,” said Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson.
Meanwhile Ravi Ashwin, who played a cameo of 20 runs, repeated that dew didn’t play a part in the game at all else the score would have been par. Mumbai chased down the total with four overs to spare to register their maiden win of the season.
“I think if dew hadn’t played a part, that score would’ve been enough, but there was heavy dew, so felt it was 10-15 runs short,” said Ashwin. “158 was a competitive score. It was always going to be about how well we started. In fact, we had a very good powerplay and got one wicket more than what Mumbai had at the front. So I thought it was a reasonably good score to fight and we pretty much did well with whatever scores we had this season. I thought the wicket was a little sticky to begin with. In T20 cricket, if it’s going to be sticky and it’s going to be the same way, you just have to hope dew doesn’t kick in.”
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