IPL 2022: Mumbai pacers end Chennai's playoff hopes

Mumbai Indians overcame a familiar top-order collapse to edge out Chennai Super Kings by five wickets Thursday in an Indian Premier League game between the two bottom-placed teams.

Chennai collapsed to their second lowest IPL total of 97 against the pace of Mumbai with Daniel Sams (3-16) and Riley Meredith (2-27) doing most of the damage upfront.

The disappointing form of Mumbai’s batters continued before Tilak Varma hit an unbeaten 34 off 32 balls and Tim David (16 not out) smashed two sixes against Moeen Ali to take Mumbai to 103-5 with more than five overs to spare.

With two league games remaining for both teams, Mumbai stayed at the bottom of the table after only their third win in 12 games while Chennai’s faint hopes for the playoffs also ended after an eighth loss.

“Irrespective of how the wicket is, anything below 130 is difficult to defend,” Chennai skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said. “A few of our batters got out on good deliveries. We can’t really help that but other than that these are the kind of games where you learn a lot, so hopefully they are learning from each and every game.”

Chennai had a disastrous start when Sams won a controversial lbw decision against Devon Conway off the second ball and one ball later Moeen lobbed an easy catch against the fast bowler’s short pitched delivery.

Conway couldn’t go for the television referral due to a power failure which made the Decision Review System (DRS) unavailable in the initial overs.

Jasprit Bumrah then made it 5-3 when he had Robin Uthappa leg before wicket off his fourth delivery before Sams struck again by having Ruturaj Gaikwad caught behind in his third over.

Chennai was in danger to fall for their lowest ever IPL score of 79 — also against Mumbai in the 2013 edition — when Meredith reduced themt to 39-6 by claiming the wickets of Ambati Rayudu and Shivam Dube in successive overs.

But captain Dhoni hit an unbeaten 36 before Chennai lost the last four wickets in four overs and got bowled out in 16 overs.

Fast bowler Mukesh Chaudhary’s triple strike in the batting powerplay reduced Mumbai to 33-4 with skipper Rohit Sharma yet again falling for a disappointing 18 and Ishan Kishan poking at a wide delivery to get caught behind for 6.

But Tilak and Hrithik Shokeen (18) batted sedately without taking any chances against pace and spin before David’s two big hits sealed the game for Mumbai.

“I thought after losing those wickets at the start, we were calm and got the job done in the end,” Rohit said. “It’s always nice to get bowlers into the games at times. It’s been batting friendly pitches all over, so it was good to see some bounce and swing up front from both sides.”

• India