Mumbai Indians got an easy win over Kings XI Punjab to continue any hope they have in the tournament as Lendl Simmons the Mumbai opener scored the first century of IPL 7. Mumbai won the match with 7 wickets with 1 over to spare at Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali.
Punjab did a little experiment with their batting order, but that hadn’t clicked at all as they managed to put up a score of only 156 runs on their board by losing 8 wickets. However, after they lost Virender Sehwag’s wicket, Manan Vohra and Shaun Marsh produced some quick runs in the match. Marsh the new man in the team scored 30 runs in just 17 balls and Vohra supported him well with a 34-ball 36 runs knock. But everything after that didn’t go well for KXIP as except George Bailey (C) every other batsman of Punjab failed to play a decent innings. Bailey scored 39 runs of 30 balls.
After a bad start Mumbai bowlers did well in the second half to restrict Punjab to such a low score after they got a flying start in the beginning of the innings. After Shreyas Gopal removed the threat of Manan Vohra and danger man Glenn Maxwell on the 11th over Mumbai got the momentum of the match and they carried it away to the end of the match. Anyway, Jasprit Bumrah also claimed 2 wickets in the match, Praveen Kumar and Krishmar Santokie supported him well by claiming 1 wicket each.
While chasing a not so big score in a ground like Mohali Lendl Simmons and Michael Hussey yet again made a strong opening partnership but most of the run in that partnership were scored by Simmons while hussy faced only 13 balls staying at the pitch for 7 overs and scored only 6 runs. Lendl Simmons stayed on the ground till the end of the innings and made a magnificent unbeaten century in just 61 balls. Rohit Sharma (C) (18 of 20 balls) and Ambati Rayudu (17 of 14 balls) supported Simmons in a decent way to get the most important two points for MI. Kieron Pollard finished the things off in style as he scored the winning runs by hitting his 300th six in the IPL.
There’s nothing much to talk about KXIP bowlers as Simmons assaulted them all without any regards to them. Anyway, Beuran Hendricks, Akshar Patel and Rishi Dhawan shared 3 wickets equally against MI. obviously the Man of the Match award was given to Lendl Simmons for scoring the first century of IPL 2014 with the strike rate of 163.93, that’s truly an incredible batting display. Virender sehwag got Yes bank maximum sixes award for hiting 2 sixes (longest) and Kanna keep calm award goes to praveen Kumar for Sehwag's runout.