IPL 2018 PREVIEW: Nothing but a win will do for Mumbai Indians against Delhi Daredevils

Denzil Pinto 22:23 19/05/2018
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  • Key player: Keiron Pollard

    Defending champions Mumbai Indians travel to Feroz Shah Kotla on Sunday afternoon knowing anything but a win in their final group against an already-eliminated Delhi Daredevils side will mean their 2018 IPL campaign will end in the group stage.

    Here, we look at the key talking points of the crucial game.

    MUMBAI CANNOT PUT A FOOT WRONG AFTER DOING ALL THE HARD WORK

    Mumbai Indians’ had a poor start to the competition with four losses in five matches but as former Australian international Dean Jones said, ‘it’s not how you start the tournament, but how you finish it’. Mumbai Indians are certainly showing that with their resurgent form of four wins in five matches to put them back in the play-off race. One positive is that Mumbai are not depending on results to go their way and have a much better run-rate than their rivals so they will only have themselves to blame if they can’t prevail tonight.

    TIME FOR ROHIT SHARMA TO STEP UP

    By his own standards, it’s been a campaign to forget for the Mumbai captain. Only 273 runs have been scored by the Indian batsman and apart from his match-winning knock against Royal Challengers Bangalore, Sharma has been a shadow of the player. He will need a big game with the bat and release the pressure on the likes of Kieron Pollard and Pandya brothers Hardik and Krunal.

    CAN DELHI CAUSE ANOTHER UPSET?

    Already out of the competition, Delhi have nothing but pride to play for. And if Mumbai think it would be an easy victory, they only have to look at Friday’s result when Delhi stunned the in-form Chennai Super Kings.

    Shreyas Iyer got his captaincy decisions spot on in that match, and with spinners Amit Mishra and Sandeep Lamichhane and batsmen Vijay Shankar and Harshal Patel impressing, he would be expecting his players to cause Mumbai all sorts of problems.

    LIKELY TEAMS

    DELHI DAREDEVILS: Prithvi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer(C), Rishabh Pant, Glenn Maxwell, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Harshal Patel, Amit Mishra, Avesh Khan, Sandeep Lamicchane, Trent Boult

    MUMBAI INDIANS: Suryakumar Yadav, Evin Lewis, Ishan Kishan, Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Keiron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Ben Cutting, Mitchell McClenaghan, Mayank Markande

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