There were smiles at last for Mumbai Imdians (MI) on a night that hadn’t looked promising when Nicholas Pooran’s fireworks – 63 off 21 – threatened to run them down.

From looking set to concede 250, MI limited the damage, conceding just one boundary in the last three overs – to restrict Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) to 228. Then, Ryan Rickelton and the returning Rohit Sharma –  fit again after five games on the sidelines due to a hamstring injury – turned in an exhilarating batting display to help MI raze their target down in just 18.4 overs.

This was the highest successful chase at the Wankhede Stadium, bettering the 220 MI had chased down against Kolkata Knight Riders to win their season-opener.

Rickelton, who struck 123 not out in his previous innings at the Wankhede last week against Sunrisers Hyderabad, made 83 off 32 in a 143-run opening stand. Rohit, who raised his half-century in 27 balls, made 84 off 44. By the time he was out mistiming an attempted pick-up shot over short fine leg, MI’s equation had come down to 52 off 36.

In the end, MI overturned a sequence of three straight losses; LSG, meanwhile, slumped to their sixth straight loss, which left them firmly rooted to the bottom of the points table.

He got off the mark with a streaky slash over the leaping slip fielder. Then, he was beaten off consecutive Mohsin Khan deliveries in the fourth over. It didn’t get any easier when he just about managed to squeeze out a pinpoint yorker from Prince Yadav in an excellent fifth over that went for just six. And then the floodgates opened.

A frazzled Avesh Khan disappeared for 4, 4, 6, 6 in a poor first over as MI ended the powerplay 71 for 0. By then, Rohit was imperiously flicking full-tosses, backing away and dispatching length balls over cover and slicing them wide of point.

M Siddharth, LSG’s impact sub, then came under Rohit’s wheel – feeding him deliveries into his swinging arc. He launched one of these over long-on to bring up his half-century off 27 balls. The landmark was merely incidental because, by now, Rohit was in his zone.

Even Mohammed Shami wasn’t spared; at one point he was left staring at the pitch, wondering what he’d done wrong. A well-executed bumper was mercilessly pulled to the backward square leg boundary. And then he went full and straight and ended up bowling a low full toss – almost yorker-length – that was shovelled for a leg-side six. Rohit’s knock ended when he swept Siddharth straight to short fine leg in the 14th over.

Rickelton’s first six came in the second over, a no-fuss, no-look pick-up six over square leg, and the big hits just kept coming. He lofted Shami through the line over long-off, and put away full-tosses from Avesh and Siddharth, depositing them behind square on the leg side. Rickelton charged to his half-century off just 22 balls, with 40 of those runs coming in boundaries.

Rickelton took a particular liking to Siddharth, who kept floating them up in trying to swerve his arm ball away from his hitting arc. His second over, the ninth of the innings, got picked away for 23. Rickelton’s party ended a couple of overs later when he fell to Mohsin after having hit him for two sixes in the same over. An attempt to go over cover was hit flat to the man at the edge of the ring. By then, the openers had added 143.

That this was a big chase was primarily down to Pooran. Promoted to No. 3, from where he had scored a majority of his 524 runs last season, he hit three sixes off Will Jacks in the fifth over – all on the leg side – to kickstart his innings.

The ferocity of his ball-striking made you wonder if this was the same batter who had struggled for any kind of batting rhythm through this season – coming into this game, his strike rate of 81.18 was the lowest among all batters who had faced at least 50 balls this season.

He had hit four sixes combined in eight games. He hit twice as many on Monday alone, in an incredible exhibition of clean, fearless hitting. He raised his fifty off 16 balls – with a strike over long-off off Deepak Chahar – and looked good for plenty more until a Corbin Bosch bouncer got big on him. One brought two as Bosch also had the set Mitch Marsh pull one straight to deep midwicket.

Reprieved even before he was off the mark – an inside-edge didn’t carry to Rickelton – Rishabh Pant couldn’t capitalise as he was soon dismissed for 15. Then, debutant Akshat Raghuwanshi – who replaced Mukul Choudhary in LSG’s XI – walloped his first ball for six before being dismissed by Raghu Sharma for his first IPL wicket.

At one point, LSG were staring at the possibility of having to summon a batter as their Impact Player because they kept losing wickets. Himmat Singh was reprieved on 2 when Jasprit Bumrah got him to edge to the keeper off a no-ball. He went on to finish unbeaten on 40 off 31, and Aiden Markram, pushed back to No. 5, on 31 off 25.

Yet, with the last five overs going for just 53, there was a sense LSG left a few runs out there. As it turned out, it’s possible even those extra runs may have not been enough against a rampant MI line-up.

Brief scores:
Mumbai Indians 229 for 4 in 18.4 overs  (Ryan Rickelton 83, Rohit Sharma 84, Tilak Varma 11, Suryakumar Yadav 12, Naman Dhir 23*, Will Jacks 10*; Mohammed Shami 1-53, Moshin Khan 1-47, Manimaran  Siddharth 2-47) beat Lucknow Super Giants 228 for 5  in 20 overs (Mitchell Marsh 44,  Josh Inglis 13, Nicholas Pooran 63, Rishabh Pant 15, Aiden Markram 31*,  Akshat Raguwanshi 11, Himmat Singh 40*; AM Ghazanfar 1-50, Will Jacks 1-34, Corbin Bosch 2-20, Bosch 2-20, Raghu Sharma 1-36)  by six wickets

[Cricinfo]

The top half of the IPL 2026 points table is an utter logjam.Punjab Kings (PBKS), unbeaten through their first seven games, have now lost two in a row. And the team that beat them on Sunday night, Gujarat Titans (GT) have won three in a row. All around the IPL, teams that had led secure lives in the top four have endured setbacks over the last few days.

And so the big squeeze. PBKS remain at No. 1, but they’re only one point above GT at No. 5.

GT, however, are the only team in the top five with a negative net run rate (NRR). This may have something to do with their style of play: they rely on their bowlers to ensure their batters don’t have to score at the frenetic rates of some other teams, but that means their margins of victory tend to be less emphatic.

On Sunday, their margin was wafer-thin – one ball remaining – despite the fact that they dominated virtually from start to finish. Their Test-match pace trio of Mohammed Siraj, Kagiso Rabada amd Jason Holder bowled hard lengths on a pitch that offered steep bounce and plentiful seam movement from those lengths, and reduced PBKS to 47 for 5. Suryansh Shedge  and Marcus Stoinis ensured that PBKS recovered to post 163 for 9, but this was still very much a GT kind of target, perfect for their style of top-order play.

A measured half-century from B Sai Sudarsan laid the perfect platform, but GT’s scoring rate remained somewhere in the region of their original required rate right through their chase. And suddenly, they ended up needing 11 off the final over. Washington Sundar sealed victory with a penultimate-ball six, but on another day, this could have so easily been the story of GT sleepwalking to defeat.

But the major story was this: for the third match in a row, GT pulled off the trademark GT victory. Straightjacketing their oppositions with the ball, and chasing down sub-170 targets with significant contributions from one or two of their top three.

Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine thrived on a slower-than-usual Hyderabad pitch to halt Sunrisers Hyderabad’s five-match winning streak in IPL 2026. Varun and Narine took five wickets between them to have SRH tumbling from 105 for 1 in the ninth over to 165 all out in 19 overs. Along the way, Narine joined the IPL’s 200 wicket club.

Kolkata Knight Riders shaved 71 runs off the target in the powerplay and eventually sealed their third successive win, with seven wickets and ten balls to spare. Angkrish Raguvanshi anchored the chase with a career-best 59 off 47 balls.

Travis Head flew out of the blocks as usual, clattering Vaibhav Arora for four fours in the second over, after SRH had opted to bat. Head didn’t let the momentum let up against Narine, slog-sweeping him for six over square leg and then pumping him over mid-on for four in the third over.

Narine’s opening over was much tighter. Bowling the first over for only the fourth time in his IPL career, he kept Abhishek Sharma to nine runs.

Head also lined up Cameron Green and went onto bring up his half-century off 22 balls. Kartik Tyagi bested Abhishek with a hard-length delivery that was clocked at almost 145kph, but Head maintained a high tempo, which was central to SRH passing 70 in the powerplay for the sixth time in ten innings in this IPL.

Head thumped Varun for 17 off five balls before the mystery spinner hit back to have him holing out in the ninth over. Head’s dismissal triggered an irreparable SRH collapse. Varun proceeded to dismiss debutant R Smaran, who had come in for the unwell Nitish Kumar Reddy, and Aniket Verma.

Once the ball grew older, it wasn’t easy to hit through the line. But that didn’t stop SRH’s batters from staying true to their uber-aggressive philosophy. Both Smaran and Aniket fell while trying to find the boundary or clear it.

After enduring a tough end to the T20 World Cup and an equally tough start to the IPL, Varun has found some form, picking up at least two wickets in each of his last four games.

Heinrich Klaasen started brightly for SRH, but a one-handed screamer from Rovman Powell, a bona fide contender for the catch of the season, stopped him on 11.

Narine then became the first overseas bowler – and third overall after Yuzvendra Chahal and Bhuvneshwar Kumar – to 200 IPL wickets when he knocked over Salil Arora with a beauty that drifted in and swerved away to hit the top of off stump. In the same over, Narine removed Ishan Kishan for 42 off 29 balls with a regulation offbreak, leaving them on 148 for 7 in 16 overs. SRH added 17 to their tally before they were bowled out for the first time this season.

Finn Allen, who had replaced his New Zealand compatriot Tim Seifert, came out attacking in the chase, smacking Pat Cummins for three fours and two sixes. Cummins, however, had the last laugh, having Allen caught at deep midwicket with a delivery that stopped in the pitch.

Allen’s early assault carried KKR to 71 in the powerplay – only twice have they scored more runs during this phase in IPL 2026.

Rahane and Raghuvanshi could afford to sit back and just bunt the ball into the gaps. They forged an 84-run stand for the fourth wicket before SRH’s Impact Player Sakib Hussain bounced Rahane out for 43 off 36 balls. Left-arm wristspinner Shivang Kumar created another opening by snagging Raghuvanshi with a wrong’un. Rinku Singh, however, got the job done for KKR along with Green.

Brief scores:
Kolkata Knight Riders 169 for 3 in 18.2 overs (Angkrish Raghuvanshi 59, Ajinkya Rahane 43, Finn Allen 29, Rinku Singh 22*; Pat Cummins 1-47, Shivang Kumar 1-31, Sakib Hussain  1-17) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 165 in 19 overs (Abhishek Sharma 15, Travis Head 61, Ishan Kishan 42, Heinrich Klaasen 11, Pat Cummins 10; Sunil Narine 2-31, Vaibhav Arora 1-25, Kartik Tyagi 2-30, Cameron Green 1-34,  Varun Chakravarthy 3-36, Anukul Roy 1-08  ) by seven wickets

[Cricinfo]