Abu Dhabi: Defending champions Mumbai Indians ended their worst ever season in four years with a consolatory win against Sunrisers Hyderabad in their last IPL 2021 match here on Friday.
The five-time champions needed a victory by a margin bigger than 170-run on the day to qualify for the last four but fell way short with a 42-run win; allowing Kolkata Knight Riders to grab the last remaining spot for Monday's Eliminator 1 match against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
MI didn't go out without a fight as blitezkriegs from Ishan Kishan (84 runs off 32 balls) and Suryakumar Yadav (82 off 40) helped them post a season-record total of 235/9 in 20 overs.
However, a fighting 69* (41) from Manish Pandey, well-backed by openers Jason Roy (34 off 21) and Abhishek Sharma (33 off 16), did the favour to KKR as it sealed MI's fate midway through the second innings.
Their efforts wasn't enough to stop SRH from their 11th defeat in 14 games as they could only post 193/8 chasing the record total.
Chasing 240, Roy and Sharma went after big names like Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult; accumulating 64 runs in the first five overs. The familiar SRH downfall soon began as Roy was the first SRH wicket to go. The Englishman he skied the Boult's delivery high only to find Krunal Panday at fine leg.
This triggered SRH middle-order collpase as wickets kept falling at regular interval with three top-order batsmen back to the dugout within next 36 runs; leaving SRH out of the game at 100/4 in the 10th over.
Pandey added runs at a good pace with the lower middle-order but SRH looked far from win with the massive ask of 130 runs in the last 10 overs. Priyam Garg (29 off 21) contributed the most among the lower order with a 56-run stand for the fifth wicket. (UNI)
