Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
On Friday, April 4, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) defeated the Mumbai Indians (MI) by convincing margin of 12 runs in the 16th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow. With this comprehensive win, Lucknow finally got their second win in the season, after their previous coming against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Hyderabad last week.
For the unversed, Hardik Pandya, the captain of MI won the toss and decided to field first. Putting the hosts to post the score first at the homeground, Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram gave a quick start. While the Aussie all-rounder went up to hit a 31-ball 60 before he became Vignesh Puthur’s trap, Markram was joined by hard-hitter Nicholas Pooran.
The West Indies international could not make much of an impact with the bat as he fell off Hardik Pandya’s delivery after scoring 12 off six deliveries. Ayush Badoni (30 off 19) and David Miller (27 off 14) also played crucial knocks, but the Protean international’s 38-ball 53 shone for the Rishabh Pant-led side. In the bowling department, MI skipper Hardik Pandya starred for the side, becoming the first captain in IPL history to pick a fifer.
LSG restrict MI to 191/5; win by 12 runs
In pursuit of the 204-run target, MI looked in the game until vice-captain Suryakumar Yadav was in the middle. However, the visitors lost the two overseas openers early in the innings, Naman Dhir and Suryakumar Yadav took charge in the middle, scoring 46 and 67 runs respectively. After Dhir’s dismissal, Tilak Varma joined SKY in the middle but was forced to retire out with Mitchell Santner replacing him in the middle.
Till the penultimate over, things looked in favour of both sides but a six off Avesh Khan added some respite in the MI camp. Thereafter, Khan restricted the MI skipper to get easy runs, thus restricting the opposition to 191/5 in 20 overs, eventually handing them a 12-run defeat.
With a win in a last-ball thriller, LSG displaced MI at the sixth place in the 10-team standings in IPL 2025. On the other hand, MI slipped to seventh place after getting three defeats off just four matches so far in the tournament.
