Who were the favourites heading into the finals?
Heading into the finals everyone probably knew that Delhi Capitals have to bring in their A-game to challenge the Mumbai Indians, as they have been the team to beat this season.
The toss did fell in favour of Delhi Capitals as Shreyas Iyer chose to bat first and apply scoreboard pressure on the 4 time champions.
So what started the mayhem?
But to their utter surprise, 10 minutes into the match and Mumbai Indians took the game by the scruff of its neck and set the tone for the match. Trent Boult set the ball rolling with the very first delivery of the match when he dismissed an in-form Marcus Stoinis with a peach of a delivery.
He quickly followed it up with the wicket of Ajinkya Rahane. To make matters more complicated for Delhi Capitals, Jayant Yadav dismissed Shikhar Dhawan in the very next over.
Where DC ever in the game?
Credit to DC that they didn’t give and steadied the run-scoring thanks to the 96 run partnership between Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant. But once Pant was dismissed the batting lost its shape and the momentum was completely lost.
Was 157 going to be enough?
It was always going to be difficult defending 157 against the batting might of MI and that is exactly how the chase panned out.
How did MI go about the chase?
Once MI set out to score 61 runs in the powerplay it was always going to be a cakewalk and the result proves just that. Quinton De Kock started the run chase in the way only he knows and belted Rabada for 18 runs in his first over, that is when the game was decided.
DC did pickup the wicket of De Kock but the carnage continued with the entry of Suryakumar Yadav. Surya later sacrificed his wicket for the sake of his captain.
Rohit Sharma helped himself to a fifty, while Ishan Kishan provided him ample support and reached the milestone of scoring 500 runs in the season.
Mumbai Indians were deserving champions
Mumbai Indians chased down the score with 8 balls to spare, thereby becoming the first team to win the IPL title 5 times. Such kind of consistency and intimidating performance is rare to be seen and MI can surely boast of having one of the best squads ever assembled.
They were deserving champions and they played like that right through the tournament.
