Two big guns of IPL, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians, will face off in match number 15 of the Indian Premier League at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Wednesday. Both teams have had familiar beginnings with Chennai Super Kings winning three out of three. Mumbai, on the other hand, have won one and lost two.
While Mumbai have the advantage with a 14-12 record over Chennai, on current form CSK hold the upper hand. They did wonderfully well against Rajasthan Royals thanks to a superb batting effort from MS Dhoni, whose blistering 75 helped them recover from 27 for 3. Chennai would want avoid batting collapses though.
In the bowling, Dwayne Bravo did a very good job to halt Rajasthan at the end. Chennai are lucky to have nice variety in the spin bowling attack with Harbhajan Singh, South African Imran Tahir and Ravindra Jadeja. They would want to improve their record against Mumbai.
As for hosts Mumbai, they are yet to hit peak form. Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock have done well so far and Yuvraj Singh and Hardik Pandya have also left mark. However, their overall batting still needs improvement.
In the bowling, Jasprit Bumrah has recovered well after getting a pasting from Rishabh Pant early in the IPL. He will again lead Mumbai's charge. But it would be interesting to see if the hosts replace the out-of-sorts Lasith Malinga with someone like an Alzarri Joseph.
Squads
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (C), Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Yuvraj Singh, Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga, Rahul Chahar, Ben Cutting, Pankaj Jaiswal, Ishan Kishan, Siddhesh Lad, Evin Lewis, Mayank Markande, Mitchell McClenaghan, Alzarri Joseph, Jason Behrendorff, Anukul Roy, Rasikh Salam, Anmolpreet Singh, Barinder Sran, Aditya Tare, Suryakumar Yadav, Jayant Yadav, Quinton de Kock (wk).
Chennai Super Kings: MS Dhoni (C & wk), Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Shane Watson, Faf du Plessis, Murali Vijay, Kedar Jadhav, Sam Billings, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Shorey, Chaitanya Bishnoi, Rituraj Gaikwad, Dwayne Bravo, Karn Sharma, Imran Tahir, Harbhajan Singh, Mitchell Santner, Shardul Thakur, Mohit Sharma, K M Asif, Deepak Chahar, N Jagadeesan (wk), Scott Kuggeleign
--By A Cricket Correspondent
