What

The Mumbai Indians will look to make it four wins in a row when they take on the Gujarat Lions in Match 16 of VIVO IPL 2017.

MI are scheduled to play their fourth match in seven days. The two-time champions started the season with a defeat to Rising Pune Supergiant, before registering three thrilling wins on the bounce. Most recently, on Saturday evening, they lost their top four with just seven runs on the board, but recovered through Kieron Pollard and Hardik Pandya to chase down 143 against RCB.

The Gujarat Lions lost their first two matches, before they bounced back strongly to defeat Rising Pune Supergiant in their most-recent outing.The Lions play four games in the next eight days and they have a great opportunity to establish momentum. The batting might of the Lions showed up against RPS; Dwayne Smith, Brendon McCullum, Suresh Raina and Aaron Finch all lived up to their billing as destructive batsmen as each of them pummelled the RPS bowlers and scored at a strike-rate in excess of 150. Andrew Tye turned out to be an inspired selection; the pacer from Western Australia finished with figures of 5-17 (which included a hat-trick) – the best bowling figures on IPL debut.

When

16 April 2017, 1600 Hrs IST

Where

Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai

The Protagonists

In each of MI’s three wins this season, one of the Pandya brothers has made a telling contribution. MI will hope Krunal and Hardik can continue doing that for the rest of the season. Kieron Pollard, not distracted by controversies off the field, played a mature knock that helped MI overcome RCB; the MI management will be pleased that the Trinidadian has shown intent to apply himself. Rohit Sharma needs to come to the party; he has been dismissed for four consecutive single-digit scores in T20 cricket for the first time in his career, and will be desperate to contribute to the team.

Among the bowlers, one expects LasithMalinga will be back in the MI XI and his four overs could have a huge impact on the game. Harbhajan Singh’s four overs will be crucial too; the off-spinner has figures of 1-56 from six overs he bowled against the Lions in the last time two matches, and he will want to settle a score or two.

In the Gujarat Lions line-up, how can one take eyes off the batting line-up? Between them, McCullum, Smith, Raina and Finch have a total of 26222 runs and 15 hundreds in T20 cricket!

Match within the match

In each of his four innings this season, Rohit Sharma has been dismissed by spin bowlers; each of those dismissals have either been bowled or LBW. The Gujarat Lions will surely be aware of this fact, and one can expect they will waste no time in introducing Ravindra Jadejainto the attack the minute the MI captain walks out to bat.

Head to Head

Overall: Matches played – 2, Mumbai Indians Won – 0, Gujarat Lions – 2

Trivia

The Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Lions both prefer chasing. In ten run-chases since 2016, MI have been victorious on eight occasions. The Lions meanwhile have won 9 of their 11 run-chases.

The last six IPL matches at the Wankhede Stadium have all been won by teams chasing

Strangely, MI have a dismal record in matches played on 16 April over the years; they have played 3 matches and have ended up losing all three.

The Gujarat Lions have the poorest economy rate among all the eight teams this season – 9.83.

What Next

For Mumbai Indians: Vs. Kings XI Punjab in Indore, 20 April 2017

For Gujarat Lions: Vs. Royal Challengers Bangalore in Rajkot, 18 April 2017