The Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers Bangalore secured their play-off places after their IPL matches on Sunday.
In the final league game of the season, a do-or-die contest for both teams, MI came out to bowl all charged up and demolished the Sunrisers Hyderabad for a paltry 113, and then knocked off the runs in the 14th over to win by nine wickets.
Dale Steyn, who experienced a poor IPL campaign, failed again to take any wickets, but did manage to stage a defiant innings with the bat as he hit 19 balls off 11 balls.
The Royal Challengers Bangalore confirmed their passage to the playoffs after they took one point from their washed-out encounter against the Delhi Daredevils.
Courtesy that one point, RCB took their tally of points in the season to 16, enough to confirm a third-place finish in the points table.
RCB were set a target of 188 after half-centuries from Quinton de Kock and JP Duminy helped the visitors to 187-5. The rains set in during the interval between innings, first delaying the start of the chase, and then again after seven balls had been bowled in the chase.
When the rains did not relent and allow the players back on to the field, the match officials had no other option to declare the match as a ‘no result’.
Both teams took home one point from the contest; RCB finished the league season at 16 points, while DD finished at seventh place with 11 points.
Earlier in the evening, De Kock, playing his third match of the season, and young Shreyas Iyer helped the visitors to a solid brisk start, scoring 55 runs in 6.2 overs. After a couple of quiet overs initially, De Kock opened his shoulders.
The left-hander helped himself to two boundaries in the third over bowled by Harshal Patel and two boundaries in the fourth over bowled by Ashok Dinda.
Soon after the strategic timeout – which was called for by RCB at the end of the sixth over – Shreyas, who had helped himself to 20 from 17 balls, cut a wide delivery from Patel straight to Chris Gayle at point.
De Kock and JP Duminy consolidated the innings further with another 55-run partnership; the former was the dominating partner yet again, this time contributing 36 runs as against Duminy’s 17.
De Kock scored 36 runs off the first 27 balls he faced, before accelerating and scoring 33 runs in the next 12 deliveries. In the ninth over of the innings, he picked up a six and two boundaries off David Wiese, and got stuck into Dinda in the 11th over, hitting him for two sixes and a four.
He was dismissed in the 12th over, when he didn’t pick a googly from Yuzvendra Chahal, attempted to hit over the top, but got the outside edge which was smartly pouched by Virat Kohli running backwards.
Duminy batted through to the end of the innings and finished unbeaten on 67. The DD skipper consumed 43 balls and hit four boundaries and three sixes.
Yuvraj Singh (11 from seven balls, one six) and Saurabh Tiwary (13 from nine balls, one six) were the other notable scorers in the innings. DD finished their 20 overs at 187-5, adding 36 runs in the last three overs.
