Mumbai aim to turn things around

Mumbai Indians will look to bring their Indian Premier League title defence back on track when they take on struggling Punjab Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium today.

Rohit Sharma-led Mumbai lost momentum when they went down by six wickets to Delhi Capitals on Tuesday, but they will be relishing facing a Punjab side that currently find themselves at the bottom of the eight-team leaderboard.

The result against Delhi isn’t a true reflection of what panned out between the sides. It was a low-scoring affair with Mumbai managing a poor 137-9 on a turning Chepauk wicket that is proving the bane of batsmen. But their bowlers managed to rein in Delhi, who won with a mere five balls left.

Captain Sharma knows batting has been difficult and that is where Mumbai’s worries lie. Sharma has led from the front with the bat, his cumulative 138 the top contribution from Mumbai’s seemingly strong batting line-up. Suryakumar Yadav is on 121, with Ishan Kishan far behind on 67. All three have featured in all matches so far. Australia’s Chris Lynn struck a 35-ball 49 on debut for Mumbai in his only game so far, while batting all-rounder Kieron Pollard has the same score from four.

Sharma said: “After the start we got (against Delhi), I thought we could have batted well in the middle overs, which we didn’t do. We didn’t capitalise on the start in the power play, which we failed to do again. You need to play smart cricket to win games, which we didn’t do.”

Punjab Kings on the other hand must have done loads of thinking after slumping to their third straight defeat of the tournament against SRH on Wednesday. It was ignominious to say the least — going down by nine wickets is.

Punjab have failed in virtually both departments of the game.