Hyderabad: Placed on an equal footing on the league table, Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad face each other in a must-win IPL cricket match with a play-off berth at stake here on Sunday.
Both sides have 14 points each from 13 matches and a win in their last league match tomorrow at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium at Uppal is a must for either team to qualify for the play-offs.
Sunrisers Hyderabad have been on a high after consecutive victories before they suffered a setback last night by losing to Royal Challengers Bangalore by six wickets in a rain-curtailed away match.
Sunrisers put up a challenging total of 135 in 11 overs after a rain-delayed start, but RCB achieved the revised target of 81 from six overs with a ball to spare under Duckworth/Lewis system with Chris Gayle (35) and captain Virat Kohli (44 not out) taking their side home.
Captain David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan have been doing a fine job at the top of order for Sunrisers and their middle-order batsmen like Moises Henriques, Eoin Morgan and Lokesh Rahul have also been making useful contributions to the team cause.
The performance of the middle order looked shaky early in the tournament but that is no longer the case now for the Sunrisers.
The Hyderabad side boasts of one of the best bowling attacks in the current edition of IPL, with the presence of top-ranking bowlers like Dale Steyn, Trent Boult, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, all-rounder Moises Henriques and Karn Sharma.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar has particularly been impressive with his death bowling as seen in the recent matches.
Sunrisers coach Tom Moody has expressed unhappiness at the way the target for RCB was revised under D/L method but he made it clear that his focus would be on tomorrow's match.
"Our focus now is on winning the match against Mumbai on Sunday. The match against RCB was thrown into extraordinary situations and we would have liked to take two points. We just take positives from it and make sure that we play our very best in the last," he said.
Mumbai have come into tomorrow's match after pulling off a narrow five-run win over defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders in a nerve-wracking last-over IPL thriller at home on Thursday.
They recovered from a poor start of 79 for four to post 171/4 following a whirlwind knock of 61 not out in 31 balls from Hardik Pandya and then restricted KKR to 166 for 7 at the Wankhede Stadium.
Mumbai possesses some top performers in Lendl Simmons, Rohit Sharma and Kieron Pollard in batting while Lasith Malinga and Harbhajan Singh can change the course of a match in the bowling department.
They have been found struggling on a few occasions and they have to come up to the expectations if MI have to win tomorrow as teams made a final dash to book play-off berths.
