The Mumbai Indians recorded their much-needed first win of the tournament against the Royal Challengers Bangalore by a massive 46 runs.
In a game between two teams that needed a win, Mumbai got off to a horror start losing two wickets in the first two balls of the match. Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan were both knocked over by some brilliant bowling by Umesh Yadav.
But from then on, it was a complete onslaught as Evin Lewis who was joined by his captain Rohit Sharma put a 108-run partnership off just 66 balls to tilt the scale back in Mumbai’s favour. Lewis was dismissed for a well made 65 off 42 balls by Corey Anderson.
From then on, it was the Rohit Sharma show as he, along with cameos from Krunal (15 off 12) and Hardik Pandya (17 off 5) propelled the Mumbai Indians to a mammoth 213 for 6 in their 20 overs.
Man of the match Rohit Sharma was asked about the start and the recovery led by him in the post-match presentation, and he said, “It wasn't an ideal situation and I thought Umesh bowled in the right areas.There’s always something for the seamers in the first six overs, but the wicket was still soft when I came in, so just wanted to assess the situation and pace my innings. This is a perfect game for us. A collective effort from both our departments, plus our fielding. We can take a lot of confidence from this game and move ahead. Yes, we lost the last three games, but we've played some good cricket.”
In reply, RCB started off well with Quinton de Kock and Virat Kohli scoring 40 runs in the first 4 overs. But when de Kock and AB De Villiers fell in the same over to Mitchell McClenaghan, Bengaluru’s hopes were dashed and they were never able to recover. Kohli fought a lone battle as he finished with 92. No one else on the team managed to score over 20 as RCB struggled to reach their eventual total of 167 for 8.
With his last knock, Kohli reached a unique milestone as the first player to score 5000 T20 runs for a single team. Kohli, now the orange-cap holder, required 49 runs to achieve the milestone before the game started.
Kohli during the post-match presentation said, “I don't really want to wear this (the orange cap) right now. We just threw it away, and need to reflect on our dismissals. One or two good partnerships would've done it for us, but credit to Mumbai who bowled really well. Mumbai played well, we didn't get any chances, and when you have your back against the wall - like they did - they could play fearlessly. We tried our hardest but couldn't get the breakthroughs."