PBKS face Bumrah, resurgent MI to make the IPL final

Mumbai: Punjab Kings have experienced a wave of emotions of peak performance and crushing lows, all in the span of a week. The high came when they rolled past Mumbai Indians in their last league match to finish on top of the points table. The result also pushed out five-time winners MI from the race to the top two and pushed them to fourth. Mumbai Indians spearhead Jasprit Bumrah could make the difference in Sunday’s IPL Qualifier 2 against Punjab Kings in Ahmedabad. (AFP)

Shreyas Iyer’s reds even had the advantage of playing Qualifier 1 on home turf in Mullanpur, New Chandigarh. However, they couldn’t hold their end of the bargain against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. On Sunday, PBKS, searching for their first title, find themselves facing a resurgent MI in Qualifier 2 at Ahmedabad.

Challenged to punish their bodies with plenty of travel – Jaipur-New Chandigarh-Ahmedabad – and limited time to rest and recoup, MI have responded well having eliminated Gujarat Titans on Friday. The star-studded MI have a chance to achieve something only SRH could manage in 2016 – win the trophy after being out of the top two since the qualifiers and eliminator were introduced. They may be jet-lagged, but there’s no better elixir than winning.

The other thing about trophies is they are not won without clinching the big moments. PBKS saw it up close. The vitality of their uncapped talent fizzled out when faced with lively pitch conditions in Mullanpur, one of their home bases.

The contrast between PBKS and MI can’t be starker. At the top, the average age of Priyansh Arya and Prabhsimran Singh is 23.5 years to MI’s Rohit Sharma and Jonny Bairstow’s 36.5. Arya-Prabh’s combined T20 experience is 136 matches to Rohit-Bairstow’s 690.

Arya and Prabhsimran are a big reason for PBKS’s march to the playoffs. But come the crunch game, they had to readjust, which one must as conditions change. Both were left licking their wounds once RCB bowlers began to make the ball talk following a departure from typical T20 batter-friendly pitch conditions.

Rohit and Bairstow had never batted together before. Only a fortnight back, Bairstow was playing Division One County cricket in whites. But he wasn’t going to let go off the opportunity to reinforce his IPL credentials. The auction reject would team up with Rohit, who rode his luck with early reprieves, and together they chanced their arms to dominate in the eliminator.

“I’ve played all those shots in the game before, and unfortunately I found fielders,” Rohit said about GT dropping him twice. “Somewhere down the line, you know, you’ve got to be lucky and today was that day for me,” he said after a brilliant 81.

MI batters pushed the envelope with the bat, and their pacers switched to fuller lengths once dew began to take effect. These were all real-time adjustments from battle-hardened MI. Not for nothing is experience valued in knockout matches.

Every team in the playoffs has had to plug the gaps left behind by overseas vacancies with the delayed finish of the tournament. While Marco Jansen has not been easy to replace for PBKS, to MI coach Mahela Jayawardene’s credit, Bairstow has proved to be the like-for-like replacement for Ryan Rickelton.

“When you have a winning culture, it’s easier to try and have that same thing going through. Even when you get a new group, we still have a very experienced core group within our ranks. So, the conversations that we have, planning and everything, is a roundabout. How can we get better? How can we push through? That winning mentality itself comes through from those senior players,” Jayawardene explained.

“And having that experience, guys who have won trophies, does help. My job is to try and cultivate that for the new guys who’ve come into the squad. After the big auction, telling them about the history of Mumbai and how we operate...and have that attitude that we will never die from a situation.”

Not every team to have retained their core before the mega auction has delivered. And PBKS went the other extreme, did a complete overhaul and strung together a strong team.

It’s now a good test case to see which of the two tactical plays triumphs. Does MI’s blockbuster core have enough legs to defeat PBKS’ bunch of hopefuls? Spirited they may be, but PBKS head coach Ricky Ponting comes with his own point to prove. Can his ensemble cast end his dry run as IPL coach?

Remember, Hardik Pandya too is on a redemption story. Overlooked by the national selectors as captain, vilified by his own fans last year, he wants the trophy as badly.

There’s only one Jasprit Bumrah, though. And he is in Pandya’s corner. Iyer said after the last defeat that they had lost the battle, not the war. Breaking the Bumrah code could prove to be the battle as well as the war.

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