IPL 2023 Live Report - Mumbai Indians vs Gujarat Titans at Wankhede Stadium

For a little while, it looked like Suryakumar Yadav would actually finish a T20 without playing that one shot that made people's jaws drop. And then he hit the most incredible six. It propelled him to his first IPL century and his team to a comfortable victory over the defending champions Gujarat Titans.

So you know how Kane Williamson dabs to third man to get singles? Well, Suryakumar accessed the same area, except he cleared the boundary. He just saw a ball on off stump. He knew he could get under it. At the point where he made contact, he opened the face, just as Williamson does, and then the strength in his forearms and his wrists did the rest.

This is Suryakumar. He sees T20 cricket the way nobody else sees it.

They need 55 off 12 now.

Yep. That turns into 48 off six and that's impossible.

Titans will need to wait to qualify for the playoffs. They could've sealed a top two place, and gained two shots at the final, if they'd done better tonight.

He's 40 off 16. Titans are 151 for 8. They need 68 off the last 18 balls. ESPNcricinfo's forecaster gives them less than 1% chance of victory from here. But don't tell Rashid that. He's made a living of doing the impossible.

This is Rashid vs Cam Green in the 18th over.

The second six took him past fifty in a game where he'd already taken four wickets. This guy!

Mumbai have found another one.

Another diamond in the rough.

Hardik, Surya, Bumrah, and now maybe Madhwal.

This kid has a huge legacy to live up to but so far he's doing fairly well. He came into the tournament because Mumbai were having so much trouble with their bowling attack. This is only his fourth game of the IPL and the 26th T20 he's ever played. And already he's shown an appetite for the tough job. Bowling at the death, bowling to big hitters, bowling with games on the line.

He has a lovely yorker. And now, it appears his other balls are just as deadly, because when he hits a hard length, they keep skidding through.

He bowled Gill with one that stayed lower than the batter expected. And now he has Miller lbw in just the same way. Skid off the pitch, and the ball not bouncing. It's remarkable. Titans 103 for 7 in the 13th over.

You try to break 200-plus chases into blocks of 10 overs? And you're aiming to be somewhere near 100 when the first set is done.

Titans have 90 on the board after 11 overs. They need 129 off 54. And they have Rahul Tewatia and David Miller out in the middle.

They'll now see this as a game of boundaries - two and over. There's dew on the ground. The ball is coming nicely onto the bat. This is a small outfield.

If not for the five wickets, Titans will be favourites here.

Even with the five wickets, they might go through, because these guys specialise in the impossible.

He's up there at No. 3 on the tournament's all-time wicket-takers list. And somehow, some way, he is having the best season of his career in 2023 at age 34. Piyush Chawla has been a revelation.

Titans are five down in eight overs. Even they will be hard pressed to turn this around.

From the inimitable Shiva Jayaraman, our resident stats superstar: One aspect of Suryakumar Yadav’s batting in T20s that grabs attention – apart from his 360-degree hitting - is his smartness in picking areas on the field. He might look like he’s taking more risks than the average T20 batter, but he’s playing percentage cricket. He has designed his batting to play to areas on the field that are likely to be vacant. So even if he mistimes the shots, often it’s unlikely that he will be caught out in the outfield. You will rarely see him hit shots in the air towards long boundaries, unless he's unintentionally timed them well.

The midwicket boundary on both sides of the wicket at the Wankhede were the longest today at 70 metres. So Suryakumar just limited his strokes through that region, scoring just nine of his 103 runs through that area. Hundreds in the IPL are often powered by hits to cow corner. An average of 24% of runs in centuries are scored through that area. Suryakumar got just 8.7% of his runs from that region in his hundred today. Out of the 79 centuries in the IPL, only one of them has a lesser percentage of runs scored through the cow corner – Paul Valthaty’s 120* against Chennai Super Kings in 2011. There's method to Surya's madness.

It just wouldn't do to discount Titans in a chase though. If they get this, it'll be the highest ever in an IPL played in India, and the second-highest in tournament history.

Mumbai's bowling is very obviously their weaker suit. So they'll know not to relax, and its not like they can, when there is a batter out there counter-punching as well as Vijay Shankar is right now.

He came in at the fall of a big wicket - Hardik - and he was at the other end at the fall of another big wicket - Gill - but he's not let that bother him at all.

All of the fours in the above sequence belong to Vijay Shankar. He's hit six of the first 11 balls he's faced to the fence, and a lot of them were pure timing. There was a flick through midwicket that was simply the result of a kiss between the bat and the ball.

Hardik hits a four. And there is pin-drop silence.

Hardik falls for 4. And the stadium erupts.

This is where Hardik rose to acclaim. This is where he emerged as the first of new generation of Indian batters who took no time at all to start hitting sixes. These are the same people who loved him for it. So they would know more than most just how dangerous he can be if he ended up spending a decent chunk of time in the middle. Their joy bears a mark of respect as well.

It's about the only consolation he can take from this game because everything else has gone against him. Titans are three down inside four overs. And along with him another of their big guns - Shubman Gill - is back in the hut.

57, 23, 55, 66, 26, 83 and now 103

It's his first IPL hundred and it comes with a shot that bears all his trademarks.

A fast bowler's delivery from way outside off stump gets swept into stands behind square leg.

All at the Wankhede are up on the feet. Several of the Titans players come up to hug Surya as he walks back, arms raised in celebration.

This has been an outstanding knock. He came in at a time Rashid Khan (4 for 30) was slicing through his team.

And he refused to let that mean anything. Rashid took four wickets, but they might end up a footnote in this game, if Mumbai win, because if Mumbai win, it's all because of this guy. This unbelievable cricketer.

But do wickets even count in this format? More to the point, do they count when Suryakumar Yadav is still at the crease? This is how he's responded to the loss of Tim David

Mohit Sharma leaks 20 off the 18th over. Mohammed Shami comes on for the 19th over and he gets the same treatment

In this sequence was a shot that will need people in NASA to come up with a name.

So you know how Kane Williamson dabs to third man to get singles? Well, Surya accessed the same area, except he found six runs. He just saw a ball on off stump. He knew he could get under it. At the point where he made contact, he opened the face, just as Williamson does, and then the strength in his forearms and his wrists did the rest.

And it's Tim David who goes down.

Titans held Rashid back for this match-up.

They only had six balls of him left.

It's amazing how often he delivers even in these circumstances.

Most teams have a big bowler, but they don't produce wickets on demand like this.

Tim David is baller against pace. If he had hung around to face Mohit and Joseph and Shami, there would've been carnage.

Instead, he's popped a return catch off the last ball Rashid will bowl on this night.

He's added a further 51 off 32 to that tally tonight. Its his fifth fifty in seven T20s. A lot of his shots, believe it or not, were fairly orthodox.

Except even there he adds his own unique style. There were a couple of balls that landed just shy of yorker length from Shami and Joseph. He just waited for it, on his back foot, and lifted both himself and the ball up high to put leverage on the shot and find the straight boundary.

From 15 runs in 15 balls to THIS

Rashid picked up Wadhera's wicket at the end of the ninth over and left the attack.

That led to a period of calm. 15 balls for 15 runs. Then Vishnu Vinod, the debutant, pulled the high pace of Alzarri Joseph for a six over midwicket

That was jaw-dropping enough, but he went and did something even better to Mohammed Shami. A scythe over point for six. And that ball did nothing to deserve such brutality. Vinod carved it over the infield, the speed of his hands, the whip of his wrists pulling off one of the more scarcely believable shots of the game.

He and SKY bashed 32 runs in 10 balls between the 12th and the 14th overs and now the game is back in the balance. Mumbai 139 for 3 in 14 overs.

Ishan Kishan stepped out to the first ball from Rashid Khan in this game.

Rohit Sharma swept him four times in four balls.

Mumbai's plan, it seems, was to take down Titans' No. 1 bowler.

And it's backfired.

Probably because that No. 1 bowler had a totally deadly plan B handy. Lately teams have taken to playing him out, which means he just keeps bowling his best ball, on a length, in line with the stumps.

Here, Mumbai tried to attack him, which meant he could play around a bit.

He saw Rohit playing for his googly by sweeping everything, and so went to his stock ball, the legbreak, and it wouldn't come as a surprise if he had insisted on having the slip in place, the slip that took the catch to take out the Mumbai captain.

Kishan went for the sweep as well, but that was just poor shot selection. Rashid's normal length is maybe sweepable. He is the type of legspinner who likes to bowl into the pitch and get skid off it. That skid is the reason sweeping him is hard. The ball just comes on too quickly.

Mumbai thought they had the players who could deal with that challenge, but Kishan chose to wrong ball to play this risky shot. It was too full. Rashid made sure of that because when the ball is full and the batter makes the mistake of playing across it, there is every chance it will sneak under the bat and trap him lbw.

Which is exactly what happened.

Rashid is 3 for 19 now, having taken out Nehal Wadhera as well. Mumbai are looking to Surya and David later on to make their innings make sense again. 96 for 3 in 10 overs.

What an over. Rashid Khan doesn't always bowl in the powerplay. But Titans put up the SOS sign and he's answered it.

It didn't start out all that well. Rohit picked his googly and crashed it for four. A sweep shot with considerable power.

The sweep seems to be his primary option. All four balls - despite at least one of them being considerably wide of off stump - were met with the same shot and the last ball almost cost him his wicket.

Titans used DRS to check for a miscued catch at slip off the sweep shot, but there was no bat, just pad, and the ball - a googly again - was spinning too far down leg to be lbw.

So next time they meet, Rashid offers the legbreak. And he wins the battle. Rohit nicks off to slip. Good on Hardik to still have one when his bowlers were being put to the sword.

Wankhede is a total mood right now. "Ro-hit! Ro-hit! Ro-hit!" they roar and their captain responds with a display of everything he is famous for

The first four was through point, punishment for letting him free the arms.

The second four was a bit of genius, seeing that Mohit had corrected his line, he made room this time and turned a ball intended to cramp him into a free hit down the ground.

Now Rohit was purring. And he got a ball on the hip asking for trouble and he gave it everything. A sweet flick of the wrist and away she went beyond square leg, 94m

Mohit was a poor match up for Rohit. 78 runs in 57 balls and only one dismissal.

Shami though has had better success, two dismissals in 51 balls, for only 57 runs. And yet even he doesn't stand a chance when Rohit decides its time to go. The third over features a monstrous hit for six over cover.

Except monster hits rarely look so beautiful.

The experts say he is dealing with a greater burden than from a few years ago, which is fair, because a few years ago, Mumbai Indians were a team who didn't need a lot of direction. They had specialists to take care of anything that even this wickedly unpredictable format could throw out.

There is even a call for him to take some time for himself. He has even seen that prove useful when Virat Kohli took a break and came back "refreshed". That was a word Rohit himself used to describe Kohli when he made his comeback in the Asia Cup in 2022.

But if Rohit stepped aside now, will his place be waiting for him when he returns? There are plenty of openers clamouring for a place in the T20I side. How long will Yashasvi Jaiswal suffer his uncapped status?

But more to the point, how long will India be willing to keep Hardik among the ranks instead of elevating him to the station above?

Its questions like these that make players push that little bit harder; that turns them stubborn; that herald second comings. Rohit is an all-time great in limited-overs cricket. This might just be the next big challenge in his path.

One thing is for certain, whatever he decides, he will have given it a lot of thought and it will go more or less right. Lest we forget, amid all the skill he has with bat in hand, he has one of the best minds in cricket.

"Looks like a good wicket. Just thought with the dew coming in, we thought chasing will be ideal," says Hardik Pandya. "You have to play good cricket no matter where you stand in the table. The kind of games we lost as well, it taught us very good lessons. We made sure to learn from it and rectified those mistakes. Same team as the last game"

Titans: Saha (wk), Shankar, Hardik (capt), Mnohar, Miller, Tewatia, Rashid, Noor, Shami, Mohit, Joseph
Subs: Gill, Sudharsan, Kishore, Mavi, Bharat

"In the last few games, things are coming along nicely for us," Rohit Sharma says. "We understand where we stand at the moment and its important not to worry about the next two games we have to play, just focus on this game and focus on what we need to do to win this one." He says Mumbai hasn't had an ideal time with injury - they lost Jofra Archer recently - and he signs off saying it's the same team that played their last game... except the XI has Kerala wicketkeeper Vishnu Vinod making his franchise debut. Perhaps that suggests he was the Impact Sub who would've come in for their last game against RCB, just that they didn't need him to chase 200 in in 16.3 overs flat.

Mumbai: Rohit (capt), Kishan (wk), Suryakumar, Green, Wadhera, Vinod, David, Chawla, Jordan, Behrendorff, Kartikeya
Subs: Madhwal, Ramandeep, Brevis, Warrier, Shokeen