The 5 Time Champions Mumbai Indians finally opened their account in the Tata IPL 2022. MI defeated RR and made a statement that they can be party spoilers for the remaining 9 teams. Suryakumar Yadav finally took the team over the finish line and this time played more maturely. In the last 8 matches, he had almost won the match on some occasions before the team slipped at the final junction.

Suryakumar Yadav shines on the big Stage

MI had a target of 159 to chase.  As usual, the openers failed to score big runs. The dashing right-handed batter made sure to get his eye in before going bang-bang. He got ample support from the scintillating Tilak Verma who made sure that the strike is rotated on consistent basis. Yadav attacked Daryl and shifted the momentum towards MI as a target of 159 requires 2-3 overs of more than 10+ runs. Later he made sure that the experienced duo of Ashwin and Chahal aren’t dominating the match. Yadav scored 51 runs and made a statement that he is still a good player as we all know that the T20 World Cup 2022 is in less than 6 months.

Chahal and Ashwin Ineffective

The lethal spin combination failed to pull a rabbit out of hat. Suryakumar and Tilak targeted the bowlers at the back end. We should not forget that Chahal is the purple cap holder and most importantly Ashwin has been in the IPL since more than a decade. This duo have the knack of being economical as well as they can be taken to the cleaners which is the harsh reality.

What went wrong for RR

Royals are too much dependent on Jos Buttler. He has been in sublime touch, but it doesn’t mean that he has taken the entire responsibility of scoring runs. The likes of Samson, Hetmyer need to form crucial partnerships in the middle overs phase . 160 score rarely gets defended in the modern era as a power-play of 60 runs can ruin everything. All in all, if RR wants to win Tata IPL 2022 then RR Head Coach Kumar Sangakkara needs to have serious conversations with batters.