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IPL 2020: Mumbai Indians high on title no. 5
IPL 2020: This, Mumbai achieved by humiliating the best of the rest, Delhi Capitals, for the fourth time this season. Sharma led that charge from start to finish, first with his captaincy and then with 68 devastating runs.
It wasn’t so much a defence of the title as a night-long and campaign-long attack on the IPL trophy. The best side of this tournament by a distance and then some, Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians, won not only their second season in a row but their fifth in eight years. This, Mumbai achieved by humiliating the best of the rest, Delhi Capitals, for the fourth time this season. Sharma led that charge from start to finish, first with his captaincy and then with 68 devastating runs.
Mumbai’s juggernaut rolled without resistance from the first ball of the evening (a wicket) to when the winning runs were scored, a juggernaut driven by an unchanged core and stewardship. As a player, Sharma has now won IPL trophies in three countries – UAE, India and South Africa with the Deccan Chargers. Tonight’s DC weren’t as fortunate as the defunct ones in their maiden final appearance, despite captain Shreyas Iyer’s untiring effort. But in the end, that effort would count only for the runs (65) he scored to give Delhi a total with a little bit of fight in it.
Chasing 157 runs shouldn’t have been as easy as Mumbai made it out to be, given that they had failed to overcome 168 runs in the only other IPL final where they had chased. But Sharma set the tone in the very first over with a straight six off R Ashwin, before Quinton de Kock took the cue from him and tore into Kagiso Rabada, the highest wicket-taker in this IPL and Delhi’s most potent weapon on paper.
Rabada went for 18 runs in his first over, thanks to three de Kock boundaries and a six, the latter possibly the shot of the tournament. Rabada had hurled in a fast and full delivery on de Kock’s off stump, which his compatriot simply flicked over the midwicket ropes. When de Kock pulled Ashwin in the following over with a short-arm swing towards the midwicket fence, even Ashwin couldn’t help shadow-practice the moment in appreciation.
When de Kock departed, the ferocity continued in the form of Sharma, who swiped fours and sixes at will on the leg side, first against Anrich Nortje in the fourth over and then against the hapless others. At the end of the powerplay, Mumbai had rocketed to 61/1.
Delhi needed something special to turn the tide and they hoped that Suryakumar Yadav’s run out, who sacrificed himself for his captain, would be that moment. It was false hope. Sharma made up for his gaffe by pummelling Rabada in the following over and Ashwin in the over after that. If he wasn’t dismissed with just 20 runs to win, the captain would have experienced a perfect IPL final. But it was near enough.
Even without a bat in hand, Iyer did his best to buck the trend of Mumbai winning IPL trophies by winning the toss and opting to bat first. Each of Mumbai’s four previous titles was won by setting a target and their only loss at this stage had come in a chase exactly 10 years ago. It took all of one ball for that plan to backfire on Delhi.
Opener Stoinis edged a short and swinging ball from Trent Boult to the wicketkeeper, and for the rest of the innings the first-time finalists had a metaphorical foot pressed to their throat. Boult threatened to take a wicket every time he ran in to bowl in his first spell, so much so that a ball drifting beyond Ajinkya Rahane’s pads was nicked for a caught behind to give him his second wicket in his second over. Delhi were now two down for 16, most of those runs scored by Shikhar Dhawan.
Dhawan had witnessed the carnage from the non-striker’s end and had even survived a Jasprit Bumrah yorker, quite like the one that had done him in a few nights ago. But he couldn’t last two balls from off-spinner Jayant Yadav, who was playing only his second match of the tournament and immediately pegged back Delhi’s top run-getter’s off stump.
Delhi found second wind in captain Iyer and Rishabh Pant, their respective half-centuries lifting the sails out of the doldrums that was 22/3. There are few better anchors in T20 cricket than Iyer, but his real achievement was to get Pant to build a strong foundation for a partnership with hard-run singles and twos. Pant only opened up his shoulders after having faced 16 balls, and it resulted in two cleanly clubbed sixes off Krunal Pandya in the 10th over.
Their stand was broken just short of the three-figure mark, a ball after Pant registered his maiden fifty of the season. Pant was beginning to throw his bat at just about anything at this point, but a bouncer from Nathan Coulter-Nile was hooked only as far as fine-leg. This caused the second collapse of the innings, the next 38 runs costing four wickets as Delhi stumbled to 156. Without Iyer’s bedrock knock, though, Mumbai’s formalities would’ve ended a lot earlier.
