oh, what a shot to kick things off! Boult goes searching for swing and over-pitches just outside off. Salt presses forward and blasts it between extra cover and mid off. Turns around, marks his guard and does not even bother to see where that has gone!
7:27pm The Mumbai Indians make their way out to the middle, amid a flurry of vibrantly blue MI flags. Fair to say that RCB and their supporters will be outnumbered tonight but they have overcome something similar this season already at Chepauk. Salt and Kohli to open. Boult, unsurprisingly, has the new ball. Salt on strike and he does not like hanging around usually. A blockbuster battle to start a blockbuster contest. Slip in place, over the wicket – let’s play!
Anand: “An interesting sub narrative is Will Jacks against RCB. looked like a retention candidate until a few months before the auctions. he’ll have a point to prove “
7:21pm A little under ten minutes before the first ball. Even if you are not at the ground, you can sense the occasion building. This may still be early in the season, but it still feels like a bit of a must-win for Mumbai. RCB, meanwhile, would love nothing more than to crash MI’s home party.
Prasanna : “Bumrah will be rusty today. RCB will take advantage of it. “
7:12pm The big news is of course the news that everyone wanted to hear: Bumrah is officially back, and will be in action for the first time since the Sydney Test in January. Rohit returns to the fold too after having recovered from his injury, and will likely be MI’s Impact Player later in the game. RCB, on the other hand, might call upon one of Rasikh, Suyash or Swapnil, based on the conditions and the match-ups.
ShahSafeer: “I’ll rephrase that, every ball is a cinema when bowler like Bumrah bowls to batter like Virat!” — We might not have to wait long for that to happen…
Pitch Report: We are on pitch no.8 today. A slight bias to one side – 66m to one side, 61m to the other, with a 74m hit straight down the ground when bowling from the North End. It is a little windy and that may have an effect on how much dew comes in. It is rock-hard, with an even covering of grass but there are a few bare patches. It should be a high-scoring surface, reckons Simon Katich. It will be interesting to see how both teams fare with the ball in the powerplay, with the wind also probably aiding movement early.
Andrew: “Game heavily in the balance with the pace trio for both teams. Exciting prospect for an adrenaline fueled pace barrage! ” — More so if the pitch has pace and bounce like in the MI-KKR game!
Royal Challengers Bengaluru XI: Virat Kohli, Phil Salt, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar (capt), Liam Livingstone, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Tim David, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Josh Hazlewood, Yash Dayal
RCB bench: Suyash Sharma, Rasikh Dar, Swastik Chikara, Jacob Bethell, Swapnil Singh
Mumbai Indians XI: Will Jacks, Ryan Rickelton (wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya (capt), Naman Dhir, Mitchell Santner, Deepak Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah, Vignesh Puthur
MI bench: Rohit Sharma, Corbin Bosch, Ashwani Kumar, Raj Bawa, Robin Minz
7pm It’s time for the toss. Namaskar Mumbai, dhamaal kara, says Ravi Shastri. A box-office contest he adds, with Hardik and Patidar out in the middle. Hardik gives the coin a spin. Tails is the call by Patidar, but heads it is. Mumbai Indians will bowl first. Hardik says it looks like a good track and dew might come in later, hence the decision to bowl first. When the wicket is good, it stays that way, and with dew, it could only get better. Time to get some good cricket behind them, Hardik adds, and that they are missing certain things at certain moments. Playing at home gives them a good chance to play good cricket and entertain the crowd. Bumrah is back, as is Rohit. So, two stalwarts back in the MI XI.
Patidar says they would have chased as well, but he reckons it will not make much of a difference and that it will be good for the batters throughout. Playing good cricket is the focus, rather than looking at the points table at the moment. Adds that they are confident about their bowling unit and that he is confident about them. They have played a lot of cricket at every venue and he says it is clear they know what to do. Same team for RCB.
Sanidhya : “I know it’s early to say yet 3 teams out of top 4 have never won the cup once.” — That is the beauty of the IPL, isn’t it?
Saifi: “RCB defeated CSK in their own backyard after inaugural season and DC did same to them after plenty of years, I feel RCB have been on a roll and could take down MI tonight to rewrite another stat. However their home games have always been a point of concern. They need to win those relatively easy matches as much as possible ” — Not sure if they are easy by any metric, but RCB will do well to cross that bridge when they reach it, and just concentrate on what is in front of them tonight.
Kannadachi : “Every ball is an event when Jasprit Bumrah bowls !”
6:40pm RCB have not beaten MI at the Wankhede Stadium since 2015. But they had not gotten the better of CSK at Chepauk since 2008 before this season either, and come into this game having not lost a game on the road in 2025. All that and much more in Sudarshanan’s preview.
Here’s Sudarshanan, our correspondent at the venue, chiming in from a while back: A fairly full Wankhede, not a lot of crowd outside when I walked in about half an hour ago. Jasprit Bumrah looks all set to play. The first thing he did after walking in was head towards the stumps at the pavilion end and do a bit of shadow-bowling. After that, he marked his run-up at both ends along with Trent Boult and Mitchell Santner.
6:35pm He’s here. He’s back. An outlier in the graph of fast bowling. A bowler beyond replication, beyond the wildest imagination, and beyond any previously perceived realms of possibility. A champion straight out of storybook fantasy, who turns lost causes into winning ones, sprinkles hope when there isn’t any, and is, for the lack of a more cultured and less clichéd word, a proper point-of-difference.
Mumbai Indians have had Jasprit Bumrah on their books for more than a decade. But they need him now more than ever. Especially with Rohit Sharma struggling, Tilak Varma scratchier than usual, and the batting and bowling not quite doing enough collectively.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru do not have that instant shot in the arm to cling on to. But their problems do not seem as far-reaching or campaign-threatening either, although they, like MI, arrive having lost their most recent encounter.
Defeats, of course, are a part of the IPL, and are often meant to be learned from, rather than fretted over or frowned upon. But…if RCB slide off the wrong end tonight, that all-too-familiar feeling of a false dawn may be tedious and tough for them and their fans to escape.
Hello and welcome everyone to ESPNcricinfo’s live coverage of MI versus RCB. A red-letter day. Then, now and probably forever. Stars galore everywhere – some rummaging for redemption, some scoping for more sparkle and swagger, but everyone determined to deny their rivals two points, and to enhance their own credentials at this celebrated coliseum of cricket.
Plenty to indulge in, so hop on!
