Steve Smith played a captain's knock to perfection leading Rajasthan Royals to the top of the IPL table with three wins out of three. RR were able to extract revenge on a MI side which had knocked them out of last year's IPL in cruel circumstances, thus condemning Mumbai to three losses in a row.Mumbai Indians suffered yet another batting collapse and and in spite of Pollard's fireworks failed to register their first win of the season.
MI suffered a huge blow before the start of play, with last match's hero Harbhajan Singh unfit to play because of a sore neck. They made three changes to the side that lost to Kings XI Punjab in their previous outing, with Parthiv Patel, Shreyas Gopal and Unmukt Chand playing their first match of this year's IPL. Aaron Finch and Patel , who opened the innings ahead of his skipper, made a decent start to the innings & was unfortunately brought to an end as Finch had to go off retired hurt after pulling his hamstring attempting a quick single. That dented the flow of MI innings as Patel was dismissed first by Dhawal Kulkarni. Rohit Sharma played a loose jab outside off stump and was out caught at slips for his second successive duck after a brilliant 98 in the opening game. With Unmukt Chand soon following him, it was left to the big hitters Corey Anderson and Kieron Pollard to steady the ship. Anderson benefited from a catch off a no ball to score his second fifty in three matches, but it was his West Indian partner, who really propelled the scoring with a 34 ball 70. Pollard smashed some meaty blows as he went hammer and tongs with a long overdue innings which is sure to bring back fear into the opposing teams. MI smashed 88 runs off the final five overs to set up a target of 165.
RR went about the chase with a clear strategy in mind. Looking to keep wickets in hand, the Rajasthan openers, Rahane and Samson didn't take undue risks instead focussing on running between the wickets. When the wicket-keeper bat was out caught off a leading edge, in came Royals stand in skipper Steve Smith and with Rahane laid the foundation for the chase. They were struggling to hit boundaries initially with the MI bowlers taking the pace off the ball, but kept rotating the strike with plenty of doubles.Rahane was out caught off the bowling off Shreyas Gopal, who had an impressive debut season last year. In came the find of this season, Deepak Hooda and he wasted no time and he struck two big sixes in the same over. Rohit Sharma had kept Malinga's 3 overs for the lag end of the innings hoping he can be at his deadly best. But he could only account for the wicket of Hooda, who showed his lack of experience by exposing his stumps to the Sri Lankan pacemen. Hooda with his 4 ball 13 had signalled the onslaught which Steven Smith carried forward with aplomb, which also included 3 boundaries of a Malinga over. In the end it was a comfortable 7 wicket victory for the Royals with 5 balls to spare. Smith the MoM for a 53 ball 79
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