Ishan Kishan smashed a 17-ball half-century as Mumbai Indians overcame a slow start to post an imposing 210/6 against Kolkata Knight Riders in an IPL fixture here today.
Ishan tore apart KKR bowling, especially Kuldeep Yadav who was clobbered for four consecutive sixes, en route to his 21-ball 62 (5x4, 6x6) as MI scripted a turnaround in the middle overs.
The momentum shifted in favour of MI in the 14th over that yielded 25 runs with Ishan making a mockery of chinaman Kuldeep's bowling. The bulk of Mumbai's runs -- 148 -- came from boundaries.
First, Ishan swept Kuldeep high over deep square leg, then smashed across the line, followed by stepping out to hit the bowler over long on to get to his fifty -- the joint second fastest of the season with Sunil Narine.
Ishan ended the over with a helicopter shot that would surely make his Ranchi mentor MS Dhoni smile as MI scored 73 runs in five middle overs to reach to 145/3 in 15 overs from being a modest 72/2 midway into their innings.
After Ishan, it was Cutting show as he hit the first three balls of the final over for a six each en route to his nine-ball 24 (1x4, 3x6) as MI finished on a high with 22 runs in the final over bowled by Piyush Chawla.
Kuldep retrurned most expensive with 43 runs from his three overs, followed by Chawla who took 3/48 but was at his expensive best.
But the picture looked different midway into MI's innings with Sunil Narine (1/27) giving them the initial edge after Dinesh Karthik opted to chase.
Openers Suryakumar Yadav (36) and Evin Lewis (18) once again gave MI a flying start with the KKR pace trio of Andre Russell, Prasidh Krishna and Tom Curran leaking 24 runs in the first three overs.
As has been their ploy, Narine came inside the powerplay and cleverly deceived the batsmen with his guile to restrict the run flow with nine runs from his first two overs.
Narine set up the stage for an ordinary-looking Chawla to give the breakthrough in the sixth over as the desperate Mumbai batsmen looked to break free against the leg-spinner who accounted for both the openers. Mumbai were 62/2 inside nine overs.
But then came Ishan who hit top gear, dealing with only fours and sixes in his whirlwhind half-century.
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