Mumbai Indians started 2020 IPL season as favorites to win back-to-back title, on Tuesday, November 10th Mumbai Indians are crowned as 2020 IPL Champions after defeating Delhi Capitals in the finals by 5 wickets at Dubai. They have won 5 IPL titles so far(2013,2015,2017,2019 & 2020) and second team to defend the title successfully in IPL history after Chennai Super Kings, who are their nearest competitor with three titles.
Delhi captain Shreyas Iyer won the toss and elected to bat first, like he did it against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the semi-finals. Delhi coach once again sent Marcus Stoinis to open the innings, but this time their plan collapsed after the very first ball of the match. Trent Boult dismissed the Australian all-rounder for golden duck.
In his second over, Boult dismissed Rahane for 2 runs ( 4 balls) to give defending champions best possible start to repeat their 2019 title success. Jayant Yadav rattled in-form batsman, Shikar Dhawan’s stumps with beautiful delivery in his first-over and the score line was 3-22 in 3.3 overs.
Captain Iyer and Rishab Pant took the responsibility to rebuild the innings on their shoulders, the pair added 96 runs for the 4th wicket in just 69 balls. Mumbai Indians Captain Rohit Sharma brought back Coulter-Nile in to the attack to break the partnership, Pant (56 of 38 , 4 X4’s and 2X6’s) who played exceptionally well with bat so far in the innings fell for slower bounce.
Delhi was on-track to score 170+ before Pant’s dismissal, but Mumbai Indians tightened the screw in the death overs by claiming three quick wickets, though Iyer was unbeaten (65 of 50)in the end but he failed to accelerate the score. Capitals managed just 156/7 in their 20 overs, they knew it’s very well 30 to 40 runs short of their intend total against deep Mumbai batting line-up.
Rohit Sharma & Ishan Kishan guides Mumbai Indians for the 5th title
Mumbai Indians off to a flying start, opening pair put up 45 runs in 4.1 overs before Stoinis removed Quinton de Kock for 20 runs of 12 balls. In form no.3 Mubai Indians batsman Suryakumar Yadav got runout (19 of 20), he sacrificed his wicket for the sake of captain Rohit after a misunderstanding between them caused a runout.
Mumbai Indians were cruising nicely towards the target without any hiccups, but Rohit Sharma’s well played innings(68 of 51 , 6X4’s and 4X6’s) come to end with a nice catch in the deep by substitute fielder Lalit Yadav of South African Nortje.
Though Mumbai lost hard hitters Pollard and Pandya cheaply in the end, Ishan Kishan’s unbeaten 33 runs from 19 balls helped the team to cross the finish line and lift the 2020 IPL trophy.
Post-Match Comments :
Trent Boult, Man of the Match: “Like the powerplay some days, yeah! It’s been a good couple of months. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being with the franchise. We’ve had a good couple of months and to get across the line is all worth it. Little bit of a niggle coming in, but of course I wanted to be on the stage doing my thing. Sometimes there are nerves but I’d like to say I’m relatively experienced, it’s just another match.”
Rohit Sharma:
“Pretty happy with how things went the entire season for us. We said at the start we want to make winning a habit, and you couldn’t have asked any more from the guys. We were right on the money from ball one and even until today, we never looked back. A lot of credit goes to people behind the scenes as well. We gotta give a lot of credit. Our work starts much earlier than the IPL starts. We analyse what went wrong, what needs to improved, stuff like that. You’ve got to find the right balance where you need to stay calm [as a leader]. I’m not someone who’ll run with a stick behind someone.
The only way you can do it is by giving them confidence. If you look at our batting, between Hardik, Krunal and Polly, we’ve been rotating them. In the bowling dept. too we try what works with us – Chahar was unfortunate, we needed Jayant tactically. When you want to change your XI to make it better, you should be able to do that [without letting someone down hard]. Ishan Kishan is someone who you can’t cloud his judgement, he has to do what he wants to do in the field. Surya, the kind of form he was in, I should have sacrificed my wicket. I give him a lot of credit, it’s not easy to do that. Some of the season he played incredible shots. These two guys, you got to keep motivating them and giving confidence and they come out with performances like that. We try and engage with out fans, unfortunately they could’t be here, but their support means a lot. Fans are who make the game special for us. Missed playing in Wankhede.”
Mahela Jayawardene, Mumbai Head coach: “I wish I could explain myself. I don’t think it was easy. You have the tag of being champions and Mumbai not winning the even years – so I had to bring the boys together. What we’ve done is try and be consistent with the processes and preparation, trying to get the guys used to that. Not try to do anything more or less. Obviously this year has been a little different. But the guys enjoyed that setup. I think the six-hitting has been in Mumbai’s DNA for a while. What we try is to play to a tempo, the touch play. Credit to the franchise who allow us to do this, make a bit of history. It’s all about helping them prepare and make sure they understand the roles they play, making things easy for them. We’ve got a leadership group out there so we try and give them a bit of work to do. The boys have heard my other side [the one that’s no soft-spoken], once in a while. They showed what they can do out there.”
Shreyas Iyer, Delhi Capitals captain: “I’ve mentioned it heaps of times, Ricky is probably the best I’ve worked with. The amount of freedom he gives is amazing. I love being beside him. He’s a confident coach, I really respect him a lot. The way he’s been conducting meetings and motivating guys has been great. IPL always amazes you. Probably one of the toughest leagues to play. I feel overwhelmed playing in such a league. It’s been a great journey. I’m very proud of my boys, it’s not a small feat to reach the final. It was a great achievement. Winning the IPL is something more – one step ahead. We’ll come back stronger and see to it that we win the trophy. I would just like to tell the fans that you’ve been great support through the season.”
Ricky Ponting, DC coach: “You’ve gotta give credit where credit’s due. MI have clearly been the better team, they beat us four times. I’m extremely proud at how we played our cricket. We have a great set of players. It’s been great fun. Iyer is a brilliant young player, a brilliant captain and even more so a great person. He’s grown in stature in the last 12 months. I love every moment and hopefully we can forget together a bit more in the future. Probably had too much preparation to be honest. We had 3-4 weeks before our first game. We played some brilliant stuff, fell off a little. It’s a tournament that’s been extremely well run. I was skeptical whether the tournament would go through.”
[…] Mumbai Indians are 2020 IPL Champions and they have one of strongest squads in the history of IPL. They can dominate their opponents in so many ways. They have decided to retain 18 Players from back-to-back championship team for 2021 season, while 7 players lost their place in the team. […]