Rohit gets birthday present, MI win their first match of IPL-15
Mumbai Indians finally opened their account in the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League with a five-wicket win over Rajasthan Royals here on Saturday.
Opting to field, MI restricted RR to 158 for six, despite a fine 52-ball 67 by Jos Buttler at the top.
The second highest scorer for RR was Ravichandran Ashwin (21 off 9 balls) who played a cameo to take RR past 150-run mark.
In reply, MI chased down the target in 19.2 overs with Suryakumar Yadav (51 off 39 balls) emerging as the top scorer.
Suryakumar Yadav and young Tilak Varma gave the best 35th birthday present to their skipper Rohit Sharma as Mumbai Indians finally opened their account, beating Rajasthan Royals by five wickets in an IPL match here on Saturday. Chasing a victory target of 159, MI reached home in 19.2 overs, courtesy Surya (51 off 39 balls) and Tilak (35 off 30 balls) adding 81 for the third wicket.
It was MI's first win after eight successive defeats and even though the result bears little consequence but it is certainly going to keep the five-time champions in a good mind space.
Losing is also a kind of habit like winning, albeit a bad one, as with it self belief also goes out of the window. Rohit didn't look one bit of his cheery self when he was cutting his birthday cake and by the end of the day, a win must have felt like a healing balm.
Teams then manage to snatch defeat from jaws of victory and something of that order was happening on Saturday night before Surya and Tilak sang the redemption song with Tim David (20 not out off 9 balls) providing the finishing touch.
It was Daniel Sams who hit the winning six to send the spectators into a frenzy. Rohit's run of poor scores continued as he tried a slog sweep off Ravichandran Ashwin (4-0-21-1) and offered an easy catch to Daryl Mitchell at square leg.
The price tag of Rs 15.25 crore is increasingly seeming like a noose around Ishan Kishan's (26 of 18 balls) neck as he started well but in desperation to over-compensate mis-timed a pull-shot.