Cricket Indian Premier League Prediction

Mumbai Indians vs Sunrisers Hyderabad - Match Preview

🏏 21 May 2023 - 14:00 GMT +0

The penultimate group stage game of the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) will see Mumbai Indians, still in the hunt for a playoff berth, take on bottom-of-the-table and already eliminated Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday afternoon at the Wankhede Stadium. In terms of qualification permutations, ahead of Saturday’s fixtures, Mumbai Indians could win this match and still not qualify for the top four. Equally, at the time of writing, they could still finish in second place if other results go their way. What is clear is that they will not improve on their current position of sixth and will not go any further in the tournament if they lose this match!

Mumbai Indians have won four of their last six matches but crucially lost their last game, a five-run defeat to Lucknow Super Giants. Victory in that fixture would have gone a very long way to securing a spot in the top four, but, in spite of being 82-0 after nine overs when chasing 178 for victory, and requiring only 11 runs from the final over, returning Lucknow bowler Mohsin Khan restricted Mumbai to only five runs from the final six balls.

Ishan Kishan top scored for Mumbai Indians for the fourth time this campaign with 59 runs from 39 balls against Lucknow. The keeper-opener has been in good form in recent games and is averaging 42.8 from his last five innings at a strike rate of 153.39. Suryakumar Yadav made only seven from nine balls in match 63 but he has hit 486 runs at a strike rate of 186.92 across the tournament, and no batter for any side has scored more runs at a better strike rate.

With the ball, spinner Piyush Chawla has had an excellent season and, ahead of Saturday’s fixtures, sat in fourth place in the top wicket-takers list with 20 dismissals and an economy rate of 7.66. In the absence of Jasprit Bumrah (for the whole season) and Jofra Archer (who was available for only five games and contributed two wickets), tall Australian left-armer Jason Berhrendorff has stepped up with 14 wickets at a strike rate of 13.71. He went wicketless in his first appearance of the campaign but will be looking to take a wicket for the ninth successive game in this clash.

Sunrisers Hyderabad have won only four games all season and have only worsened as the season progressed, losing seven of their last nine. Their last three matches have all been lost by large margins - eight wickets, 34 runs and seven wickets. They may well have lost more games by large margins if it hadn’t been for the form of keeper-batter Heinrich Klaasen, who has been a rare positive for the Sunrisers this year. He hit 104 from 51 balls in the defeat to RCB in the last match and has amassed 157 more runs than any of his teammates in the competition. Of all players in the 2023 IPL to have batted more than three times, only Faf du Plessis (58.50) has a higher average than Klaasen (53.75).

Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan were the only Sunrisers bowlers to pick up a wicket in the heavy defeat to RCB. Kumar has been in strong form with 11 wickets from his last seven games, but overall, the bowling has been very poor for the franchise this season. They have had the top wicket-taker on both sides in the game only four times out of 13 and they have taken only 2.38 wickets on average from over 7-16. In both of those statistics, they have the worst record of all teams.

Mumbai Indians have won six of the last eight head-to-head fixtures with Sunrisers Hyderabad and have come out on top in their last three matches (vs Gujarat Titans, RCB, and Rajasthan Royals) at the Wankhede Stadium. However, the Sunrisers have won two of the last three head-to-heads with Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium with the third game only won by the hosts via a super over in 2019.

⚡ Players to watch: In spite of beginning this IPL season with scores of 15, 1, 0, 43 and 7, Suryakumar Yadav has been in excellent form over the second half of the campaign. He is averaging 60 in his last eight innings, with the runs coming at a rate of greater than 12 runs per over in four of those innings.

Heinrich Klaasen had scored only 66 runs from six IPL innings ahead of this campaign, but he has been brilliant for Sunrisers Hyderabad this year with 430 runs from 10 innings. He hit 36 runs at a strike rate of 225 in the reverse fixture against Mumbai Indians in April and has scored his runs at a higher strike rate in only one other innings this season.

📋 Stat attack: Heinrich Klaasen has a strike rate of 194.02 against spin, the highest of all batters to have faced 50+ balls this season.

• Sunrisers Hyderabad have conceded the most powerplay runs nine times this year.
• Chris Jordan to Aiden Markram and Glenn Phillips: 1-59 at 10.11rpo.
• Sunrisers Hyderabad have a 2-5 record in 2023 when chasing.
• Heinrich Klaasen has top scored in Sunrisers Hyderabad’s last three innings.
• Bhuvneshwar Kumar to Mumbai’s top three (Ishan Kishan, Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav): 1-115 at 8.85rpo.
• Piyush Chawla against Rahul Tripathi in T20s: 2-7 from 8 balls.
• Suryakumar Yadav at Wankhede Stadium in this IPL: ave. 68.40, SR 206.02.