KL Rahul smashed a brilliant century as Lucknow Super Giants beat Mumbai Indians by 18 runs in the IPL 2022 to effectively eliminate them from contention.
With a 56-ball century in his 100th Indian Premier Competition (IPL) game, Lucknow Super Giants skipper KL Rahul put five-time champions Mumbai Indians all but out of the league with an 18-run victory on Saturday. Unbeaten 60 balls from Rahul, his third three-figure century in all IPL editions, pushed Lucknow to 199 for four, and then his bowlers joined the party to restrict Mumbai Indians to 181 for nine in 20 overs.
Six straight losses mean the league’s most successful team’s tournament is done even before it has reached the midway point.
In the midst of Ishan Kishan’s Rs 15.25 crore price tag, Rohit Sharma’s tournament horror continued with his six while Ishan Kishan’s 13 off 17 balls on a Marcus Stoinis delivery was met with a foam-based boundary rope smash.
At one point, Dewald Brevis smashed a stunning 31 off 13 balls, before NT Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav (37 off 27 balls) combined 64 runs to bring the innings back to life.
The match was finished once Jason Holder yorked Tilak, and Surya failed to gain the assistance he needed from the other batters, despite Kieron Pollard’s valiant efforts in a losing cause (25 off 14 balls).
Finally, the death knell for MI was struck when the team fired Surya after he couldn’t stop Ravi Bishnoi’s long hop.
For Lucknow, bowlers Avesh Khan and Dushmantha Chameera (3/30 in 4 overs) and Holder and Stoinis (1/13 in 2 overs) provided solid support to the medium-pace bowlers.
Lucknow has won four of their six IPL matches, while Mumbai has lost six in a row for the first time in 15 seasons.
As long as the team they’ve put together lacks a plan B and the players to carry it out, things are only going to get worse.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is providing Rahul with the opportunity he has been looking for to improve his leadership credentials for the national team, both as a batsman and a captain.
Prior to reaching his hundred, he shared an opening partnership of 52 with Quinton de Kock (24 off 13 balls), scored 72 with Manish Pandey (38 off 29 balls), then scored another quick 43 with Deepak Hooda (15 off 8 balls) to help his side to their total of 158.
It didn’t help that Rahul was in imperious form to make full use of MI’s fielding, which was possibly their poorest in the prior four to five seasons.
Fabian Allen (1/46 in 4 overs) was Rohit Sharma’s sole viable choice in the dugout, therefore it was only a matter of time before the tournament’s most successful captain appeared to be running out of ideas in the field.
Only one player can salvage the squad from this season’s debacle: Jasprit Bumrah (0/24 in 4 innings).
To begin with, Tilak Varma is only a part-time off-spinner and Lucknow captain Ajinkya Rahane is a maestro of slow-bowling.
When it came to the six powerplay innings, six different bowlers were utilized, and de Kock should be the one to blame for not taking advantage of the shirtfront-like track.
To make matters worse, Rahul was forced to play cuts and pulls as well as a slog sweep because of the abundance of short balls.
Mi lost by 24 runs, including seven sixes, and even the best of Tymal Mills (0/54 in 3 overs), Jaydev Unadkat (2/32 in 4 overs), and Murugan Ashwin (1/33 in 4 overs) could not save them.
This is a good example: Stoinis hammered Ashwin for sixes off his decent googly. Rahul hit a six behind square leg off Allen’s wicket-to-wicket delivery.
It didn’t assist MI’s situation since MI had one of the worst outfield days, not being able to cut the boundaries despite getting hold of the ball, between overs 13 and 16, Rahul and co. added 60 runs.
Trent Boult, Krunal Pandya, and Rahul Chahar are missing from MI’s team, and acquiring 16 middle-of-the-road players for merely 18 crores hasn’t worked out well for the team as a whole yet.
