On Wednesday in Mohali, Mumbai Indians defeated Punjab Kings by six wickets after successfully chasing down the PBKS’s 215-run mark.
The PBKS achieved a total of 214 thanks to Liam Livingstone’s unbroken 82 and Jitesh Sharma’s unbeaten 49, with Rohit Sharma choosing to bowl first after winning the toss.
The innings’ last few overs saw debutant Akash Madhwal excel with his performance, allowing only 12 runs in the 18th over and limiting the PBKS batters to just 9 off the final over.
After being caught for 16 runs in his opening over, Madhwal finished the game with a 3 overs 37 for 0 total.
The Maharashtra-based franchise recruited the 29-year-old Madhwal, who plays for Uttrakhand, as a substitute player in the previous IPL season after Suryakumar’s injury that kept him out of the season the year before but did not get to make a start the first time around.
The impact player rules, which have proven to be a welcome addition in terms of the entertainment factor but have also acted as a platform to give more players a chance to shine on the biggest of T20 stages, led MI to retain the services of the medium pacer for his base price of Rupees 20 Lakhs and will be looking to use him.
Mumbai lost the valuable wicket of their captain Rohit early in the innings as he left before making a run. However, Ishan Kishan and Cameroon Green gave Mumbai some stability before the Australian was bowled by Nathan Ellis after scoring 23 runs off of 18 balls.
The essential contributions of Kishan’s brilliant 75 off 41 deliveries and Suryakumar Yadav’s blitzkrieg 66 runs off 31 deliveries helped their team win.
Tim David’s 19 and Tilak Verma’s 26 helped Mumbai cross the finish line that evening as MI secured its fifth victory of the competition.
Mumbai is ranked sixth in the standings with 10 points after 9 games, whereas Punjab is ranked seventh with 10 points after 10 games with a lower net run rate than MI.