Kieron Pollard
In the absence of Rohit Sharma, interim Mumbai Indians skipper Kieron Pollard has won the toss and opted to bowl first against Chennai Super Kings at Sharjah on Friday in Match 41 of IPL 2020.
"We are gonna bowl first. Don't expect the wicket to change much and hopefully, there's some dew. We want to qualify to the playoffs first and we still have to come out and play good cricket," said Pollard after winning the toss. MI have slotted Saurabh Tiwary in their line-up as Rohit Sharma's replacement.
"We have spoken about areas we need to improve and we want to execute them in the middle tonight. Rohit is struggling with his left hamstring and hopefully, he will be fit soon and take the captaincy. The only change we have is Saurabh Tiwary comes in for Rohit," added Pollard.
Talking about CSK, they've made three changes to the playing XI with Imran Tahir coming in to play his first game of the season.
"Last game we played here the wicket played slightly better in the second innings, so not much of a problem. Once we landed here we had a 14-day break and before that, we had a seven day-camp in Chennai and once we're here it became slightly difficult with the quarantine and there were a few phases where the game went out of our hands and the batting wasn't also upto the mark."
"It happens in cricket and there are quite a few reasons for why we haven't been upto the mark. Three changes for us. Kedar Jadhav, Shane Watson, Piyush Chawla out and Jagadeesan, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Tahir are in," said CSK skipper MS Dhoni.
Defending champions Mumbai Indians, with 12 points under their belt, will aim to climb on the top of the points table by thumping Dhoni's men. They're currently sitting on the third position by registering six victories. The Yellow Army, on the other hand, will fight for finishing their dismal journey on a positive note. The three-time champions have slumped to the bottom place with just three wins from 10 games so far.
In the IPL 2020 tournament-opener between both the sides, CSK had registered a comprehensive five-wicket victory over the Mumbai side. Dhoni's men will be hoping to deliver similar performance and improve their dismal winning percentage of the on-going edition.
Mumbai Indians (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock(w), Saurabh Tiwary, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard(c), Krunal Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rahul Chahar, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah
Chennai Super Kings (Playing XI): Sam Curran, Faf du Plessis, Ambati Rayudu, N Jagadeesan, MS Dhoni(w/c), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ravindra Jadeja, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur, Josh Hazlewood, Imran Tahir
