Dwayne Smith and Brendon McCullum put Mumbai to the sword
Friday 17 April 2015 21:24, UK
Mumbai Indians slumped to their fourth straight defeat in the IPL, hammered by six wickets by Chennai Super Kings.
The Indians recovered from another terrible start to post 183-7, but the Super Kings romped home with 20 balls to spare, their openers Dwayne Smith (62 off 30) and Brendon McCullum (46 off 20) giving them the platform with a superb stand of 109 off just 7.2 overs.
The Indians were limping on 12-3 early on, with Parthiv Patel (0), Lendl Simmonds (5) and Corey Anderson (4) back in the hutch.
Harbhajan Singh (24 off 21) was promoted to stop the rot, but when he departed Rohit Sharma (50 off 31) and Kieron Pollard (64 off 30) launched a fine counter-attack.
Pollard smashed five sixes in a blistering knock, tucking in to some woeful bowling from left-arm spinner Ravi Jadeja in particular. Pollard hit three sixes in one Jadeja (0-49) over that cost 26 runs.
Ambati Rayudu added three maximums in his 16-ball 29 late on as the Indians finished strongly, though Dwayne Bravo removed him and Pollard in the last over with consecutive balls.
Smith and Kiwi star McCullum then set about the Indians’ bowling.
After a steady start, they took 21 off the fourth over, bowled by Lasith Malinga, then 22 off Jagadeesha Suchith’s fifth.
Skipper Sharma rotated his bowlers, but the result was the same.
Harbhajan conceded 18 off the next over as the carnage continued, then 17 were collected off the next from Pawan Suyal. Smith's 50 came off just 22 balls, but Harbhajan then got a double breakthrough, first removing McCullum who smacked him straight to long on.
Four balls later, Smith slog-swept, top-edged and Sharma took a steepling catch.
Faf du Plessis (11) and MS Dhoni (3) fell cheaply, but Suresh Raina, with 43no off 29 balls, in partnership with Bravo (13no), got Chennai home at a canter.
Bravo smashed his fellow West Indian Pollard over long-on to seal the win in spectacular fashion.
