Hardik Pandya struck form before the T20 World Cup while veteran Piyush Chawla also bagged three wickets as Mumbai Indians restricted Sunrisers Hyderabad for a below-par 173/8 in their IPL tie here on Monday. Pandya found rhythm and momentum to return 4-0-31-3 while Chawla (4-0-33-3) produced an impactful performance to trouble the SRH batters. This was Pandya's fourth best bowling figures in the IPL. Indian cricket team captain Rohit Sharma was a happy man seeing the progress of his NO. 1 all rounder.
To add to Pandya's joy, MI won the match by 7 wickets with Suryakumar Yadav scoring an unbeaten ton.
However, to his credit, SRH skipper Pat Cummins chipped in with a 17-ball 35 (2x4s, 2x6s) late in the innings to take them past the 150-run mark.
In complete contrast to last time these teams met earlier in this IPL when SRH hammered 277/3, their usually free-flowing batters struggled for momentum and lack of initiative meant they could never really trouble the Mumbai bowlers.
The batters struggled on a two-paced surface and and MI were quick enough to capitalise.
The powerplay had yielded 56 runs for the visitors without any damage but lack of initiative and regular fall of wickets stemmed the flow of runs.
Coming on to bowl only in the second half of the innings, Chawla made the biggest impact with key wickets of Travis Head (48) and Heinrich Klaasen (2) to put Mumbai Indians in complete control.
Head, who rode his luck throughout his stay in the middle, could not make the most of it.
With two inside edges for boundaries at the start, SRH's premier batter appeared to be struggling for timing and rhythm.
In the fourth over, on 24, Head made room to smack MI debutant Ankush Kamboj and lost his off-stump in the process but that was when he got his first lifeline as the bowler was found to have overstepped.
Head got another life when Nuwan Thushara spilled a regulation chance at deep third man when the opener was on 44 in the eighth over, but by then, SRH's decline had already begun.
Bumrah had got Abhishek Sharma (11 off 16 balls) caught behind and Mayank Agarwal (5) had become the Kamboj's first victim.
Nitish Kumar Reddy (20) was bounced out by Pandya, who also snaffled the wicket of Shahbaz Ahmed (10) later on to mark a complete flop show with the bat for SRH.