Mumbai Indians (MI) lost Qualifier 2 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 to Gujarat Titans (GT) at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Friday (May 26) and were eliminated from the tournament following the defeat. Notably, Gujarat will now face Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the final of the IPL 2023.
Speaking of MI’s loss, the Mumbai-based team missed the services of their destructive opener Ishan Kishan in the mammoth run chase. It is worth mentioning that Kishan was taken off the field midway through the first innings of the game and didn’t come out to bat for MI in the later half of the match, either.
Asked to bat first, GT put up a great show as Subman Gill scored his third ton of the season, powering Gujarat to a daunting total of 233/3 in their allotted 20 overs. Gill slammed a brilliant 129 off 60 deliveries and hammered seven fours and ten sixes during his sensational knock. Meanwhile, other than the terrible performance of bowlers, what hurt the MI most during the Ahmedabad-based side’s batting was losing their wicketkeeper to an injury.
It all happened after the 16th over of Gujarat’s innings when Chris Jordan was putting on his cap, and Ishan was changing sides. During the process, both the MI players accidentally collided with each other, and Jordan’s elbow unfortunately hit Ishan in his left eye. The match was stopped after the incident, and the physiotherapist was called in for a check. Ultimately, the wicketkeeper had to leave the field, with Vishnu Vinod coming in as his concussion substitute to keep the wickets for the remaining overs.
Coming back to the match, MI unfortunately lost the contest by a huge margin of 62 runs. Vishnu failed to make an impact and could contribute just five runs in the run chase. Although Suryakumar Yadav (61) and Tilak Varma (43) played quickfire innings for their team, their effort went in vain as Mumbai was bundled out for 171 in 18.2 overs. Mohit Sharma was the pick of the bowlers for GT, with a fifer in the match.
Following the heart-breaking defeat, Mi skipper Rohit Sharma talked about Ishan’s injury in the post-match presentation and said: “We did not expect that, he had a bit of a concussion, I don’t know how it happened.”
