Mumbai Indians (MI) thrashed Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by eight wickets at Wankhede Stadium on Monday, as they registered their first win of the ongoing IPL 2025. After bundling KKR out for just 116 in 16.2 overs, they chased down the target with ease in just 12.5 overs.
But from this game, one name will be remembered for a long time by cricket lovers, especially MI fans, and that is Ashwani Kumar.
After winning the toss, MI skipper Hardik Pandya opted to bowl, and the 23-year-old left-arm pacer from Punjab shone with the ball on his debut, picking up four wickets for just 24 runs in three overs. In his very first ball, he took the wicket of KKR skipper Ajinkya Rahane and then followed it up with the wickets of Rinku Singh, Manish Pandey and Andre Russell.
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Along with him, both Trent Boult and Deepak Chahar also struck early with the new ball, as KKR scored 41/4 after the first six overs of the Powerplay. Then, Vignesh Puthur, Hardik and Mitchell Santner also picked up one wicket each as KKR registered their sixth-lowest total versus MI in IPL history. Angkrish Raghuvanshi (26 off 16) and Ramandeep Singh (22 off 12) were the only batters who crossed the 20-run mark.
In reply, MI chased down the total with ease as Ryan Rickelton remained not out on 62 off 41 balls, while Suryakumar Yadav smashed an unbeaten 27 off just nine balls. Rohit Sharma’s struggles this season continued, as he scored 13 off 12 before getting out to Russell.
After the match, Rahane opened up about the batting failure and vowed to learn quickly from their mistakes. “Collective batting failure. It was a good wicket to bat on. 180-190 would have been a good total on this pitch. We expect that (here), it has good bounce. When you are fighting against the bounce, that is what we did. You have to use it sometimes – we have to learn really fast. The bowlers were trying their best but there weren’t many runs on the board. We kept on losing wickets – four in the Powerplay, and after that, it was difficult to consolidate. You need one batter to bat through and stay till the end, but that did not happen,” Rahane said at the post-match presentation.