Despite a throttling hat-trick of Samuel Badree, the Mumbai Indians fought really hard against the Royal Challengers Bangalore and finally, achieved victory by 4 wickets at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in the game number 12 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 10. After an initial severe damage to the top order, it was Kieron Pollard and Krunal Pandya who withstood against the Bangalore bowling attack and took their side to victory.
Despite a furious knock of 62 runs off 47 balls by Virat Kohli, an easy target of 143 runs was set by the RCB for the Mumbai Paltan to chase. Parthiv Patel and Jose Buttler came in to open the inning and it seemed that Mumbai will chase down the target single-handedly but the things went just upside down. The first wicket partnership lasted for just 7 runs after Buttler was dismissed after scoring only 2 runs.
In the third over, Mumbai had their worst nightmare ever spinner Samuel Badree appeared as a horrible demon who punished them without mercy. Badree took the first ever hat-trick of this tournament and hunted down three key players of Mumbai who were Parthiv Patel, Mitchell McCleneghan and skipper Rohit Sharma. By the end of 3rd over, MI was reduced to 7/4. The next batting pair of Nitish Rana and Kieron Pollard tried to take the responsibility to score and chase down the target but after adding 26 runs, Mumbai suffered another Badree attack as Nitish Rana was dismissed at 11 runs off 16 balls.
The score was 33/5 while Pollard was still there on the ground who was moving ahead towards his half-century very quickly. Perhaps it was the first time that he played so sensibly and it seemed that Pollard has taken all the responsibilities on his shoulders all alone. He hit 5 sixes and 3 fours and played a massive knock of 70 runs off 47 balls.
His inning along with Krunal Pandya’s 37 off 0 balls proved to be the saviour one for Mumbai and they won the game by 4 wickets.
