LSG super in Barbourne

Captain Rahul’s unbeaten ton crushes defending champions by 18 runs, their 6th successive defeat

Lucknow Super Giants skipper KL Rahul made batting look like a walk in the park with a 56-ball century in his 100th IPL game to put five-time champions Mumbai Indians all but out of the league with an 18run win on Saturday.

Rahul's unbeaten 60-ball 103, his third three-figure mark across all editions of IPL, propelled Lucknow to a commanding score of 199 for four and then his bowlers joined the party to restrict MI to 181 for nine in 20 overs.

With six consecutive defeats, the tournament is as good as over for the league's most popular team, even before it has reached the halfway stage.

Rohit Sharma's (6) nightmare of a tournament continued while Ishan Kishan (13 off 17 balls) is certainly feeling the pressure of the Rs 15.25 crore price tag as he played on a Marcus Stoinis delivery and displayed his frustration by smashing the foam-based boundary rope.

In between, Dewald Brevis (31 off 13 balls) hit some breathtaking shots before another find of the season, NT Tilak Varma (26 off 26 balls), and the ever dependable Suryakumar Yadav (37 off 27 balls) added 64 runs to resurrect the innings.

Once Jason Holder yorked Tilak, the match as a contest was over with Surya not getting the required support from other batters, although Kieron Pollard (25 off 14 balls) threw his bat around in a losing cause.

Surya's dismissal, after he failed to dispatch a Ravi Bishnoi long-hop, was the final nail in the MI coffin.

Lucknow's fast bowlers Avesh Khan (3/30 in 4 overs) and Dushmantha Chameera (1/48 in 4 overs) got good support from medium pacers Holder (1/34 in 4 overs) and Stoinis (1/13 in 2 overs).

Lucknow have four wins from six games while MI have lost a dozen games on the trot for the first time in 15 editions of IPL.

With the kind of team they have assembled, it will only get worse from hereon as there is no plan B, and more importantly, the players to execute the plan.

For Rahul, both as a batter and skipper, the IPL is proving to be the platform which he desperately needed to enhance his captaincy credentials as far as the national team is concerned.

On way to his hundred, he added 52 for the opening stand with Quinton de Kock (24 off 13 balls), 72 with Manish Pandey (38 off 29 balls), and another brisk 43 runs with Deepak Hooda (15 off 8 balls) for the fourth wicket.

MI's fielding was perhaps their worst in the past four to five seasons and it didn't help matters

6 that Rahul was in

imperious form to

4

make full use of it.

2 Bereft of credible

options in the dugout,

0 it was only natural that the tournament's most successful skipper, Rohit Sharma looked clearly out of ideas and his ploy of playing an extra spinner in left-arm orthodox Fabian Allen (1/46 in 4 overs) didn't quite work out. Jasprit Bumrah (0/24 in 4 overs) is manfully carrying the burden but one man can't save the team from the disaster that this season has turned out to be. Otherwise why would the MI skipper start with part-time off-spinner Tilak Varma, knowing that the Lucknow captain is a master player of slow bowlers. The six powerplay overs saw six different bowlers being used and de Kock should blame himself for wasting an opportunity to score a big one on a track that resembled a shirtfront. There were too many short balls for Rahul to play the cuts and pulls at will and also the slog sweep, and not to forget some delectable drives when anything was pitched up.