Keeping alive their hopes of making into the play-offs this season after defeating a star-studded Kings XI Punjab in the last game, defending champions Mumbai Indians will be up against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday.
Rohit-led Mumbai have had a brutal run in the league so far but they changed their fortune in the last game after chasing down a target of 177 runs in 19 overs to keep themselves alive in the race of top four.
Fifth placed Mumbai will now face yet another tough challenge from Kolkata Knight Riders who are coming into this game after defeating Chennai Super Kings in their last match at Kolkata.
It was U19 world cup hero Shubman Gill's star night versus CSK, who was promoted to bat at No 4 in the absence of Nitish Rana, where the young fellow along with skipper Dinesh Karthik took the charge to take team for a comfortable six-wicket win.
In Sunday's game, both the teams will enter the ground on the back of confidence boosting victories. However it will be a big task for KKR to get over MI who have always had an edge over their Eastern rivals.
In the history of the Indian Premier league, Mumbai Indians have defeated Kolkata Knight Riders 16 times out of 21 games played so far, which is also the league record of most wins by a team against a single opponent.
This will be the first outing for both the sides against each other in this year's tournament before they we will be back again on Wednesday at Eden for the return game.
Mumbai batting this year has so far revolved around former KKR's batsman Suryakumar Yadav who is making the most of his new role of opening the innings. The local Mumbaikar has smashed 340 runs from nine innings with four fifty plus scores two of which came in winning cause against CSK and KXIP.
On one hand Surya has got the lifeboat batting in the top order, Rohit has struggled to perform according to his caliber by coming down the innings. MI skipper has just managed to put 220 runs on board from nine innings. However his top three score of 94, 57* and 24* have helped Mumbai to big wins and he'll be hoping to continue that in coming games even.
Mumbai will also be having high expectations from the duo of Krunal and Hardik Pandya to carry on with their good form, While Hardik clicked match against RCB with three wickets and fifty, Krunal played quick cameo of 31 not-out of just 12 deliveries versus Punjab.
In the bowling unit, the bowlers are among top wicket takers and are regularly troubling batsman, Mayank Markande and Hardik Pandya leads the chart with 12 wickets, while Bumrah and McClenghan have ten scalps each in their name. But the team has to find an early solution for poor death bowling. In the last two games, the bowlers have spare 20 plus runs in the last over which proved to be decisive.
On other hand, Kolkata will eye for hat-trick of wins when they will enter to play against Mumbai. KKR defeated RCB and CSK in their last two games.
KKR's batting revolves mainly around the likes of Chris lynn and Dinesh Karthik who have been their consistent performers so far scoring 260 and 280 runs respectively from nine innings.
Apart from them Sunil Narine, Nitish Rana, Andre Russell and Robin Uthappa have also done well on few occasions.
In the last game Shubman Gill's unbeaten 57 off 32 balls at a crucial situation has aroused hope for improvement in the middle order. While in bowling, the spin trio of Narine (10 wickets), Kuldeep and Chawla (6 wickets each) have worked well for KKR.