MOHALI, India, CMC – Kieron Pollard’s run of poor form continued but Mumbai Indians still produced a strong all-rounder performance to trounce Kings XI Punjab by 25 runs in the Indian Premier League here yesterday.
Sent in at the PCA Stadium, Mumbai raised a challenging 189 for six off their 20 overs before restricting the hosts to 164 for seven off their 20 overs, to pull off their third win in seven games and move to six points.
The defeat was Kings XI’s fifth in six outings and it left them bottom of the pile.
Opener Parthiv Patel struck a top score of 81 off 58 deliveries to fire Mumbai, and got support from Ambati Rayudu with 65 off 37 balls, with four fours and four sixes.
They lost their prolific captain Rohit Sharma to the second ball of the game without a run on the board but Parthiv and Rayudu put on 137 for the second wicket to kick-start the innings.
Pollard, batting at number five, never got going and had crawled to ten off nine balls when he mis-cued the penultimate delivery of the innings from seamer Sandeep Sharma to be caught at third man.
The Trinidadian’s previous scores have been 1, 1 not out, 1, 39 not out and 19.
In reply, Kings XI got 56 off 39 deliveries from Australian Glenn Maxwell and 45 off 34 balls from another Aussie Shaun Marsh, but the innings still faltered.
South African David Miller tried a last ditch cameo with an unbeaten 30 from just 17 balls.
Pollard’s two overs of slow medium went for 25 runs.
