Lucknow Super Giants 145 for 6 (Stoinis 62, Hardik 2-26) beat Mumbai Indians 144 for 7 (Vadhera 46, Mohsin 2-36) by four wickets
There is no correlation between Mohsin Khan’s rise to the crease and the ball he sends down. Sometimes, he gets big on the batter. Other times they get an unexpected swing. He uses his height to great effect and should have incredible strength in his shoulders. It seems that’s where he gets all his speed, which fooled everyone. He was producing a foul shot roughly once every three balls.
Rohit Sharma can hit a spooned ball straight to short cover. The MI batter threw his head back in utter disappointment. He was thinking that four more should have gone. But instead he went to 4 on his birthday. Nehal Vadhera was looking to grow his front foot. Not only was he met with a searing yorker, but before he was ready for it, his bat dipped and crashed into his stumps.
Anyone can bat up the order and give them two or three overs per match. Stoinis knows his limitations. He knows he doesn’t have much pace, but that worked in his favor when bowling to Suryakumar Yadav. An attempted boundary flick to fine leg ended up being a feather to the keeper. After the new ball’s swing disappeared, it was brave of LSG to keep Stoinis in the second over against one of the most dangerous batsmen in the world. But that was probably the plan – deny SKY the speeds they like – and it worked.
Lost Rohit and Suryakumar in back to back overs. Lost Thilak Verma and Hardik Pandya in back to back deliveries. MI is a sinking ship after just 5.2 overs. He hit just three boundaries in the powerplay, the lowest this season. It was a perfect scenario for Ravi Bishnoi to come and dictate terms. He bowled four overs on the trot, conceding 28 runs and took the wicket of Ishan Kishan with a beautiful googly, deceiving the left-hander as he slogged across the line and was caught at short third. Vadhera did his best from the other end, 9 off 15 from 13 to 20 off 46 to eventually score 46 runs. Most of his runs came from Mayank (21 off 12, 2x4s, 2x6s).
Batting average around 40, strike rate 150, four wickets from 12 overs bowled, has an LSG cheat code and his name is Stoinis. The chase really kicked into gear in the third over when Gerald Coetzee was pulled for back-to-back boundaries. By then the new ball was doing a fair bit and LSG’s focus was on seeing the game out. Rahul dropped the anchor (5 off 13, before scoring 28 off 22). He was looking for his partner to make a play and he did. big time
Stoinis came into the game with an average of 19 against spin and a strike rate of 128 in IPL 2024. But he smashed Piyush Chawla and Mohammad Nabi to a total of 29 runs off just 16 balls with four fours and a six. . That ended up being much needed insurance as after the fall of his wicket, LSG needed 27 balls to score the remaining 30 runs, also losing two wickets.