Struggling Mumbai take on resurgent SRH in crunch tie

Struggling to stay afloat following their fifth defeat in six outings, former champions Mumbai Indians clash with a resurgent SunRisers Hyderabad in a crucial Indian Premier League game at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday.

MI seemed to have found their moorings after outclassing Royal Challengers Bangalore on April 19 in Bengaluru to end their dismal four-defeat streak. But it appears to have been a false dawn considering the manner in which they were dumped to a 37-run defeat by Delhi Daredevils, who thus snapped their nine-match losing streak at home on Thursday.

A lot of work, in re-jigging of personnel and strategy, remains for bottom-of-the-table MI before they confront the SunRisers, who have gathered themselves from a stuttering start to occupy the fifth position. Captain Rohit Sharma had justified the chopping and changing of the playing XI in the matches gone by, but MI have failed to come up with the right answers.

R Vinay Kumar and Pawan Suyal, who opened the bowling in MI’s first home game against Kings XI Punjab on April 12, were left out of Thursday’s game at the Feroz Shah Kotla. One of them, at least, appears to have earned the right to bounce back after the dismal show put up against the Devils by Jasprit Singh Bumrah, who was preferred ahead of Karnataka’s victorious Ranji captain Vinay, and his teammate Abhimanyu Mithun, who is yet to play a game. The bright spot for MI in an otherwise gloomy bowling scenario has been the generally good show put up by their key men, Lasith Malinga and Harbhajan Singh, after a dismal start against KKR in the opnere on April 8.