Mumbai: Mumbai Indians registered a comprehensive win of 41 runs against Pune Warriors India at Wankhede Stadium on Saturday. Sachin Tendulkar (44 off 29 balls) gave Mumbai a great start while Dinesh Karthik and Rohit Sharma played tremendous knocks off 44 and 62 respectively to help their team post a total of 183 runs on the board.
Chasing the target of 184, Pune were off to a shaky start as they lost the wicket of Aaron Finch on very first ball of the innings and to make this situation worse, Robin Uthappa and Ross Taylor also departed with just 13 runs on the board. Yuvraj Singh and T Suman kept the scoreboard ticking with those singles and odd boundaries but their efforts were not good enough to keep Pune in hunt. Yuvraj and Suman departed after making some decent contribution of 24 and 23 runs respectively.
Angelo Matthews, who made some very silly decisions in bowling, too departed after scoring 19 runs and left his team in trouble. At the end of the innings, Mitchell Marsh showed some spark as he played a cameo of 38 runs to reduce the margin of defeat. PWI ended up scoring 142 runs for the loss of eight wickets in their 20 overs.
Johnson bowled really well to pick up three wickets for just 33 runs.
Earlier, Mumbai Indians were off to a great start. Tendulkar smashed Ashok Dinda for four back-to-back boundaries to show his immortal class and ensured that his fans did not go disappointed. MI lost their first wicket at the score of 54 runs when man with the golden arm, Yuvraj Singh, took the wicket of Ponting in his very first ball of the match. Ponting went after scoring 14 runs and was joined by Tendulkar in the dressing room as he departed after scoring blistering 44 off just 29 balls. MI was 2/75 in their first 10 overs with two of their in-formbatsmen Dinesh Karthik and Rohit Sharma in the middle.
From the 11th over, they started smacking the bowlers. It was Karthik who started first with his copy book shots to keep an impressive run rate and added 55 runs for the third wicket. He scored 44 runs off 29 balls before he got out to Mitchell Starc who bowled an off-cutter which came back in to get him leg before wicket. But Rohit Sharma kept going from one end and thrashed Ashok Dinda all over the park. Mumbai Indians scored 68 runs in their final five overs. Rohit Sharma remained not out for 62 runs off just 32 balls and was very well accompanied by Keiron Pollard who scored 19 off 14 balls.
By ISN
