Mumbai Indians head coach Mahela Jayawardene admitted that powerplays have been a concern for his side in this edition. While MI have lost four of their five matches this season, Monday’s (April 8) defeat to Royal Challengers Bengaluru marked their first loss at home. Invited to bat first, RCB racked up 73/1 in the first…
Royal Challengers Bengaluru broke a 10-year long jinx to beat Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede stadium for the first time since 2015 in a thrill-a-minute high-scoring contest. The game see-sawed all the way through and nearly sided with the hosts before RCB bowled their way out of trouble in the nick of time to take…
By now it is well established that Mumbai Indians have a dubious reputation for poor starts. And that is not just in terms of match outcomes alone. They often begin the games just as poorly. Increasingly, their fortunes are being decided in the first six overs – more often than not, for the worse. The…
Sunrisers Hyderabad continued to look like the shadow of their 2024-selves as they suffered their fourth straight defeat of the season – and second at home. The comprehensive seven-wicket win put Gujarat Titans on the opposite end of this spectrum, making it third straight win. On a slow surface where stroke-making was tough, SRH crashed…
MS Dhoni has always got his timing right. If anything, it’s been a hallmark of his cricket career. Especially when it comes to his exit strategy. He left Test cricket when he felt the Indian team had transitioned and was ready for their next chapter without him. He did the same from white-ball cricket, even…
At 65 for 5, Delhi Capitals were in trouble in their first match of IPL 2025 against Lucknow Super Giants. Watching from the sidelines, team mentor Kevin Pietersen was asked in a flash interview if the game was slipping away. The former England captain replied in the negative. He backed Ashutosh Sharma, who’d just walked…
Siuu went Siraj. It had been an eventful over – the fifth of the first innings. He could have had Phil Salt run out all by himself but missed by a whisker. He then saw the ball being smashed out of the ground, forcing for it to be changed. Siraj wasn’t happy with the replacement ball…
PowerPlays sometimes tell you things that scorecards don’t. One glance at the first six overs of this game and it screams how it unfolded. Punjab Kings were 61/1 after the PowerPlay, and Lucknow Super Giants 39/3. That alone was enough to foretell the result. Because statistically, it’s brutal for teams that lose three or more wickets in…
This IPL season has brought in two rule changes that are meant to help bowlers. But they’ve ended up creating a tricky choice for the captains. One brings back the use of saliva to shine the ball and use reverse swing. The other rule allows the fielding captain to replace the ball with one of…
Sunrisers Hyderabad have accused the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) president of blackmail, coercion and threatening its staff at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Uppal, Hyderabad. The SRH team, owned by the Chennai-based Sun Group, has also alleged that HCA president Jagan Mohan Rao locked the corporate boxes hours before their game against Lucknow Super…
