SURYAKUMAR Yadav smashed a 51-ball 102 not out with 12 fours and six sixes, as Mumbai Indians overcame a total similar to the one they fell short of while chasing in identical conditions three days ago at the same venue.

SRH’s failure to replicate KKR’s success with the ball was down to Suryakumar and his boundary-hitting ability as MI were far better at it than their opponents on the evening. Suryakumar’s counterattack blew SRH away after Hardik Pandya and Piyush Chawla picked three wickets each to keep the visitors down to 173 for eight.

In the middle-overs. SRH lost their way after an early wobble and just struggled for boundaries. MI on the hand, suffered a worse start but were offered a counter-attacking resurrection by Suryakumar.

The MI pacers got the ball to swing and kept the SRH openers relatively tied down for the first half of the PowerPlay. Debutant Anshul Kamboj nearly had a moment to savour when he cleaned up Travis Head, only for the umpire to strike it out as a no-ball. 19 came off that over and Head rode his luck a little with inside edges but Bumrah snuffed out Abhishek Sharma in the last over of the PowerPlay.

Head’s luck ran till the halfway stage as Kamboj nearly had him again, only for Nuwan Thushara to drop a sitter at third man. In the same over, however, Kamboj had his first-ever wicket in the IPL when Mayank Agarwal was cleaned bowled. Piyush Chawla and Hardik Pandya then put a big dent on one of the best batting sides of the tournament with the wickets of Head, Nitish Reddy and Heinrich Klaasen.

Hardik continued to reap rewards off hard lengths and Piyush picked his third wicket to cripple SRH further but Pat Cummins added a valuable cameo to give his bowlers a total to work with.
In a phase where boundaries came easy for the hosts, they still lost their top-three to top-class bowling. Marco Jansen started badly with a wide four but made up for it by getting Ishan Kishan to nick to Mayank Yadav at first slip. Pat Cummins then took out Rohit Sharma – for the fourth time in IPL – with an innocuous leg-stump ball that Rohit tried to flick and edged. Heinrich Klaasen covered ground behind him to complete the take.

Dew made life tough for SRH and Suryakumar added to the misery with a fine counterattack. Jansen erred in lengths and earned his wrath, with two fours and two sixes in a 22-run over. T Natarajan bowled a good first over and Nitish Reddy started well too but Suryakumar was still able to toy with SRH’s fields to blaze away.

By the 13th over, MI had a total of 18 boundaries (15×4, 3×6) equalling SRH’s entire tally. With Jansen going for runs, Cummins brought on left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed for an over, who was also taken apart by Surykumar via two sweep shots. With that, he brought up the 100-plus run stand with Tilak off just 64 deliveries.

Cummins, who’d barely put a foot wrong on the day, brought himself back for his last over early at the death in a desperate search for a breakthrough. Suryakumar fronted him, smashing two fours and a six to get into the 90s. In the 18th over from Natarajan, Suryakumar brought up his three-figure milestone – second in IPL – off 51 balls with a majestic six over extra cover and wrapped up the chase with 2.4 overs to spare. (Cricbuzz)