Suryakumar Yadav scored a fluent 79, as Mumbai Indians cemented their spot at the top of the table by defeating the Royal Challengers Bangalore by 5 wickets at Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
RCB brought in Joshua Philippe, Shivam Dube and Dale Steyn for Aaron Finch, Moeen Ali and Navdeep Saini, while MI went in with an unchanged line up.
After being sent in by stand-in skipper Kieron Pollard, Philippe and Devdutt Padikkal got Bangalore off to a great start by adding 77 run for the opening wicket, before the former was stumped brilliantly by De Kock off Rahul Chahar or 33.
Skipper Virat Kohli failed to get going, as he skied a Jasprit Bumrah delivery to Surabh Tiwary at mid wicket. It was also Bumrah’s 100th wicket in the IPL. Co-incidentally, his first wicket in the tournament was also the current India captain.
In the 16th over, Kieron Pollard brought himself on to bowl and claimed the prize scalp of AB de Villiers, who hit a full toss straight to Chahar at deep square leg.
Bumrah turned the game in Mumbai Indians favour by getting rid of Shivam Dube (2) and the set Padikkal for a well made 74(45).
Gurkeerat Singh and Washington Sunday scored some handy runs at the end to take Royal Challengers Bangalore to a total of 164/6- ( a competitive, but far lower than what they would have expected after being 129/2 with 5 overs to play)
Jasprit Bumrah was Mumbai Indians best bowler with figures of 3/14.
Chasing 165 openers, Quinton de Kock and Ishan Kishan made a solid beginning by putting on 37 runs for the opening stand, before the former fell to Mohammed Siraj for 18.
Kishan looked good in his brief stay, before he became Yuvendra Chahal’s first victim.
Saurabh Tiwary and Krunal Pandya fell cheaply, as Mumbai were in a spot of bother at 107/4.
The pair of Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya stitched together a valuable 51 run stand for the fifth wicket, before the latter fell to Chris Morris.
Skipper Pollard scored a boundary of his very first delivery, and Yadav smashed Siraj over extra over to take Mumbai home with 5 balls to spare.