It was a homecoming that the Mumbai Indians had not expected. After two defeats in the first two matches of the IPL 2024, the Hardik Pandya-led team was in desperate need of some home comfort. But MI batters failed to impress amid a fiery Rajasthan Royals bowling as three of their top four batters were out for 0. They scored just 125/9 – the lowest first innings at IPL 2024 so far. The batters who fell for duck were Rohit Sharma, Naman Dhir and Dewald Brevis.
Former MI skipper Rohit Sharma fell for a golden duck (when a batsman gets out on the first ball he or she faces). It was his 17th appearance in the IPL – the highest in the tournament alongside Dinesh Karthik. The duo is followed by Piyush Chawla (16 ducks).
Rajasthan Royals’ Yuzvendra Chahal (3/11) and Trent Boult (3/22) suppressed a struggling Mumbai Indians side and restricted them to 125/9 in their Indian Premier League match in Mumbai on Monday. Boult struck early with a three-wicket burst in the powerplay and Chahal made life miserable for the rest of the batters in the next overs, putting up brilliant figures of 3/11 in four overs, accounting for Hardik Pandya (34), Tilak Varma (32) and Gerald Coetzee (4).
If Chahal suffocated the MI batters in the middle overs while keeping both Pandya and Varma out, it was Boult who ran riot in the home side’s top order, dismissing Rohit Sharma, Naman Dhir and Dewald Brevis for ducks.
The tone was set in the first over himself with Boult rocking Mumbai Indians twice, including Rohit’s expensive scalp for a golden duck.
Looking for the feel of the ball on his bat perhaps prompted Rohit to go for a ball that was dismissed by Boult, and an outside edge was sniffed beautifully by Rajasthan’ keeper-skipper Sanju Samson, who took it with his right hand and a diving.
Dhir (0) was guilty of running over the wickets and failing to cover Boult’s inswing, with the ball crashing into his pads. A DRS call was ultimately burned as tracking of the ball showed it would have clipped the leg stump.
The situation in Mumbai worsened when impact player Brevis (0) played one meek to short third on another delivery that deflected away from the right-hander off Boult in the third over, with Nandre Burger (2/32) taking a sharp reverse cupped catch.
Ishan Kishan (16) played some attractive strokes but Burger found an outside edge of the left-hander’s bat, with Samson completing another fine grab behind the wickets to keep Mumbai Indians under the pump in the powerplay.
Pandya, who was booed from all sides here, walked to a similar reception, but a brief backlash from him turned the negative noise into cheers.
The Mumbai skipper showed intent when he hit three fours off Burger in the sixth over but it was Chahal who ended Pandya’s resistance.
Chahal bowled one outside off stump to prompt Pandya to have a go, and the batsman obliged with a big swing of the bat, but the ball didn’t travel far enough.
The substitute Rovman Powell read the height and speed well to cover a few meters to his right and take a nice diving catch, denying Pandya the chance to be a hero for his side.
With PTI inputs
Varma did well from his side but a fine catch at short third man from Ravichandran Ashwin ended his stay.
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