Cricket Indian Premier League Prediction

Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challengers Bangalore - Match Preview

🏏 9 May 2023 - 18:00 GMT +0

Match 54 of the 2023 IPL is set to see the current Indian captain battle against the former Indian captain with Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians taking on Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore. The reverse fixture saw RCB win easily by eight wickets thanks to half-centuries from both RCB openers after Tilak Varma smashed 84 from 46 in Mumbai’s batting innings.

RCB sits just outside the top four in the logjam of teams with ten points through ten matches played. With 16 points, the likely number to qualify for the playoffs come season’s end, this is a match RCB simply can’t afford to lose - especially with much more difficult matches against Rajasthan and Gujarat still to come. The combination of Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli has been the key for RCB so far in this tournament, with the pair combining for almost 1000 runs, putting RCB right in the middle for average scores of 175 runs per innings. The bowling of RCB needs to improve, though, with the bowlers conceding 179 runs per match and being hit for the most sixes (9.10).

Josh Hazlewood returned to the RCB lineup recently and has had a huge impact in bringing the overall economy rate down whilst taking three wickets across the two matches. Hazlewood couldn’t quite save RCB in their most recent match, which was a loss to Delhi thanks to smashing innings of 87 from 45 by Phil Salt. In good news, the middle order of RCB actually chipped in some runs with Mahipal Lomror smashing his way to 54 from just 29 balls. That was along with another half-century to Kohli and 45 to du Plessis to ensure he would keep the tournament’s Orange Cap for a little longer.

It’s been an up-and-down season for Mumbai, with the side unable to grab the consistency needed to be amongst the upper echelon of sides. Much like RCB, Mumbai sits in the middle of the table on ten points after ten matches, and consequently, the winner of this match will have a major advantage by jumping into the top four and into playoff contention. Looking through the numbers, Mumbai has been lucky to even win one game, having given away the most runs through the tournament (185.30 per match on average). Thankfully for Mumbai fans, Suryakumar Yadav has found some form as of late, scoring 293 runs in the tournament at a strike rate of 175.44. At the end of the weekend, no batter had more runs at a better strike rate this season.

Mumbai is, of course, coming off the IPL’s latest ‘El Clasico’, a match that Chennai won by six wickets pretty comfortably after the Mumbai top order once again failed to get going. Things are so bad at the top that Rohit Sharma demoted himself to number three. It didn’t help, though, with the skipper getting a third ball duck while trying to play a ramp shot for his fourth consecutive single-digit score. Piyush Chawla showed that he’s a standard above with two more wickets to add to his tally which currently sits at 17 for the tournament, the four-best this season. Against the RCB openers, powerplay bowling will need to improve with Mumbai averaging just one wicket during that period while being smashed for 2.60 six on average in the first six overs.

⚡ Key battle: No one in the IPL goes harder than Glenn Maxwell and his strike rate of 181.94 shows exactly that, is the highest for any batter in this IPL with more than 100 runs. Jofra Archer may have struggled with just two wickets in five matches, but he has enjoyed bowling to Maxwell in the past at removing him twice from 17 balls in T20 cricket, while only being hit for 14 runs.

📋 Stat attack: The Wankhede has seen an average score of 192 in the 2023 IPL, with the highest score being 214.

• Just one of the last five matches at this stadium has seen the team beat first win.
• Harshal Patel has the best head-to-head figures among these teams with 5/27.
• Suryakumar Yadav took Mohammed Siraj for 44 runs from 21 balls while being dismissed just once.
• Glenn Maxwell faced three balls from fellow Australian Cameron Green for two sixes and a dot.
• Ishan Kishan has struck 202 runs during the powerplay this season while being dismissed only three times.
• Piyush Chawla to Glenn Maxwell in T20s: 3/54 from six overs bowled.
• Harshal Patel to Rohit Sharma in T20s: 3/27 from 23 balls bowled.