Mumbai Indians v Sunrisers Hyderabad: Hosts to win high-scoring game and keep Playoff hopes alive at 3/1

• Mumbai need to win to keep season alive

• Average first innings score here is 197.5

• In-form Klassen has top-scored for SRH in each of his last three

Sunday May 21, 15:00
TV: Live on Sky Sports

Mumbai Team News

This is must-win for Mumbai, who are currently fifth, overtaken in the standings on Thursday by RCB, who got the better of SRH.

A win here and defeat for RCB would see them move into fourth with their other routes of escape into the Playoffs being them winning and LSG losing to KKR. Or both them and RCB winning but the Indians doing it with a far larger margin of victory, which would be pretty unlikely given their current respective net run rates.

Last time out they lost to LSG in a strange sort of match. The wicket was actually a bit better than it looked before the toss and looked considerably better than that when Marcus Stoinis launched a late assault that got Lucknow to an above-par score.

The Indians in turn made a good start but unlike in previous matches, their big-hitters like Sky Yadav, Cameron Green and Tim David weren't able to come in and score freely from the off.

In the end they came up five runs short. In a season where we've seen them being both pretty good and pretty bad, it's somewhat fitting that their season is going down to the wire.

Chris Jordan has now been extremely expensive for three matches in a row and has taken just the one wicket to make up for it. Duan Jensen and Riley Meredith could come in for him.

Possible XISharma, Kishan, Yadav, Wadhera, Vinod, Green, David, Jansen/Jordan/Meredith, Shokeen, Chawla, Behrendorff.

SRH Team news

So what went wrong for SRH this season?

Just about everything.

Much was expected of speedster Umar Malik, who bowled quickly enough but was equally erratic and was dropped early on in the campaign. Let's see if he improves or remains a bowler with all the pace but little in the way of control.

Big-money signing Harry Brook had one magnificent century to his name but that's pretty much all he did for the season and he too was dropped at one stage.

Washington Sundar, a proper all-rounder, got injured for the third season in a row.

Aiden Markram, who had been one of the most in-form batsmen over the last couple of years, managed just one fifty all campaign and for good measure, his strike rate was down, too.

One who can hold his heads high is Heinrich Klassen. 430 runs, at an average of 53.75, with a strike rate of 179 and with a century and two fifties to his name, is as good as it gets, especially when you remember he often batted at five or six.

With the ball, Bhuvi Kumar and M Markande each took over a wicket a game and went for less than 8.5 an over but even then, those aren't great numbers.

Let's see if ahead of next year there are widespread changes or if they stick with what they have.

Possible XISharma, Tripathi, Markram, Klassen, Brook, Phillips, Samad, Kumar, Tyagi, Natarajan, Reddy.

Pitch report

Mumbai will be glad to be back at home on a good wicket where their batsmen can trust the surface and play their big shots.

Historically the first innings average at the Wankhede Stadium has been 168.8 but this season it's almost 20 runs higher than that at 197.5.

So 200 will be the target batting first but both sides will probably want to chase anyway; the team batting second wins 53% of the time here.

How to Play

You'll see worse prices this weekend than the 1.728/11 on Mumbai to win this.

They've been far better than SRH all season, have generally been good at home on this flat wicket and really need to win this, while the Sunrisers are done and dusted; even a win here may not be enough to avoid the wooden spoon. Although that could arguably work in their favour to be under no pressure.

It's probably not worth worrying too much about the toss bias, either. SRH have made a mess of plenty of chases this season where they should really have got over the line but didn't.

So we think this will be high-scoring again given the wicket, we're not too worried about SRH getting to chase and we think Mumbai will win this vital match to them by hook or by crook, against a team who has won just 4 in 13 so far this season.

That leads us to the 3/1 option that is Mumbai winning with both teams scoring 170 runs or more, a far more attractive prospect than the straight bet on the Indians just to win.

Klassen to show his class?

I'm amazed that that you can get 6/1 on Heinrich Klassen to top score for SRH.

His 430 runs for the season are almost 150 more than anyone else in the team despite often batting at 5-6, and he's fresh from one of the best centuries you'll ever see in a game of T20 cricket. With scores of 47, 64 and 104 he's now top-scored in each of his last three games

Earlier on in the campaign it may have been a bit of worry that coming in as the finisher he simply might not get enough deliveries to face to top score but that's not the case anymore now that he's made the Number 4 slot his own. Maybe if they'd batted him there earlier on their season may have turned out differently.

But he's no 6/1 shot given all this.

Mumbai Top Batsmen

For Mumbai, Cameron Green catches the eye at 11/1 but he's batted quite low down of late, so we'd probably be relying on him being promoted to have a shot on him.

And you could say the same about Vishnu Vinod, who has impressed with some quick knocks and will look big indeed at 19/1 if he gets to bat in the Top 5.

The man to beat is probably Sky Yadav but the 11/4 isn't great given he was often 5/1 earlier on in the season.