On the smallish ground of Holkar Stadium, Indore, Mumbai Indians managed to keep the batting heavy Punjab team down to 174/6 while batting first. With the batting line-up that Punjab boasted they will consider themselves a good 20 runs short on this pitch but it was Stoinis who got them this far. Mumbai bowlers contained the batting well but lost it in the last over going for 22 runs.

Earlier in the night, Mumbai Indian captain Rohit Sharma called the side of the side of the coin and chose to field first. Mumbai brought back Evin Lewis and dropped Kieron Pollard. KXIP made three big changes. They brought in Axar Patel, Marcus Stoinis and Yuvraj Singh for Manoj Tiwary, Barinder Sran, and Aaron Finch.

The start was expected to be a fiery one with Gayle and Rahul playing with the short boundaries but it was very slow. In the first three overs, KXIP scored only 17 runs. Gayle then opened up his hands and smashed three boundaries in the Hardik Pandya’s over. He then smashed a four and a six in the McClenaghan’s over to end the powerplay on 49 runs.

The middle overs were much like the starting overs where Mumbai Indians bowlers successfully kept KXIP quiet. Gayle scored his fourth fifty in the competition but it was the slowest as it came in only 40 balls showing the slower nature of the pitch. Yuvraj again struggled and was run-out for 14 from 14 balls.

The surprising factor tonight was KXIP’s batting order. They sent out Axar ahead of Mayank Agarwal. By the start of 20th over, KXIP was on 152/5. Mumbai was ruling the game but Stoinis slammed 22 runs in the last over and took KXIP to a fighting score on a slow track.