Playing XI
Venue Insights (Abu Dhabi)
Highest Team Total: 206/4 By Punjab Against Chennai In 2014.
Lowest Team Total: 70/10 By Bangalore Against Rajasthan In 2014.
Highest Individual Score: 95 By Glenn Maxwell (Punjab) Against Chennai In 2014.
Best Bowling Figures: 4/20 By Sunil Narine (Kolkata) Against Mumbai In 2014.
Highest Partnership: 131 By Jacques Kallis And Manish Pandey (Kolkata) For 2nd Wicket Against Mumbai In 2014.
Win Rate Batting First: 60% (6 Won; 4 Lost)
Top Fantasy Picks - Bowlers
Deepak Chahar is looking good now after a patchy middle phase this season with identical performances of 2/18 in the recent two matches. A look at his last 3 matches against Mumbai: 2/32, 3/26 and 1/30.
With 15 wickets Jasprit Bumrah is joint 3rd in the list of Purple cap holder. A look at his recent 5 matches this season: 3/24, 1/22, 0/26, 4/20 and 2/41 (Total 10 wickets).
Shardul Thakur might have been wicket-less in the previous fixture but before that, he had picked up at least a wicket in every match this IPL season.
Top Fantasy Picks - All Rounders
With 10 wickets, Sam Curran is the joint highest wicket taker for Chennai. To go with that, he has opened in the last 3 matches and will continue to do so as he has piled up 53 valuable runs in these matches which is above average.
Pollard has scored over 200 runs this season at a SR of 200, which is just staggering; to go with that he also has 2 wickets. Also, he has a great record against Chennai which might bring the best out of him at Sharjah.
Scores of 35*, 33* and 25* in the recent 3 matches proves that Jadeja's bat has started to do the talking which was missing earlier. Also, he can give you extra points with his run-outs and catches given that he is an excellent fielder and also wickets with the ball.
Top Fantasy Picks - Batsmen & Keepers
With 375 runs Faf is 4th in the list of Orange Cap holder. He has played 2 matches at Sharjah this season and his scores are 58 (47) and 72 (37) in these matches, thus he is an interesting pick.
Stat alert: Surya for Mumbai against Chennai: 249 runs at an average of 49.80 and SR of 130 in 6 innings. These are just interesting numbers and Surya is certainly a player with an X-factor.
Quinton has scored 4 fifties in the last 5 innings which is enough to prove his purple patch. As context, Sharjah (the venue where this fixture is) was the venue where he scored his first fifty this season and since then he has not looked back.
Probable XI
Chennai : Faf du Plessis, Sam Curran, Shane Watson, Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni(wk/c), Ravindra Jadeja, Kedar Jadhav, Deepak Chahar, Piyush Chawla, Shardul Thakur, Josh Hazlewood/Imran Tahir
Mumbai : Rohit Sharma(c), Quinton de Kock(wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah
Preview
El Clasico of the League – Round 2! Sure you know what that means, only that for a certain team, it does not matter much now. Chennai, languishing last in the points table have their campaign hit a near end. Their batting has not been upto the mark while their bowling at the death has been really poor. They have not displayed any intent at all, running out of juice, as their coach remarked. Mathematically, it is still possible for them to qualify if they win all their coming games and a host of other factors work in their favour, but all those are highly unlikely. For Mumbai, their arch rivals, Chennai, are an easy prey now. The Men in Blue and Gold are in supreme form while their opposite number is down and almost out. Time to pay back for the loss in the opener and knock their arch rivals out of this tournament for good they would reckon.
Toss : Mumbai won the toss and elected to bowl first.