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Jaipur
Mumbai Indians (MI) defeated Rajasthan Royals (RR) with a thumping 100-run victory to steeply climb on the IPL scoreboard at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur. RR has now become the second team to be knocked out of the tournament after Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) departure on Wednesday.
Rohit Sharma and Ryan Rickelton laid a solid foundation with a first-wicket partnership of 116 runs. Taking the reins further was the MI captain Hardik Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav both scoring an unbeatable 48 runs. The partnership led MI to a score beyond the 200-run mark, thus leading the team to a grand finish. Both faced an identical 23 balls and ended up with the same strike rate of 208.69.
Rajasthan, on the other hand, had a tough start to chase a steep total of 217 runs set by MI as the team lost centurion Vaibhav Suryavanshi for a duck by Deepak Chahar. The batting woes continued with the dismissal of Yashasvi Jaiswal for 13 to Trent Boult before Parag and Nitish Rana were sent back by Boult and Jasprit Bumrah respectively. Bumrah then snapped up the dangerous Shimron Hetmyer for a duck as RR went 5 down inside powerplay.
Batters Shubham Dubey and Dhruv Jurel were not in their best forms either with Hardik Pandya and Karn Sharma accounting for their wickets much early in the game. The next to get bowled out was Maheesh Theekshana (2) while Kumar Kartikeya went for 2 as Karn sent both of them back. Boult then took the last man in Jofra Archer and finished with 3 wickets. The home team were bowled out for 117 as no player made more than Jofra Archer’s 30 runs.
