Mumbai Indians (MI) gave the perfect gift to captain Rohit Sharma on his 35th birthday with their first win of the ongoing IPL 2022 season, after defeating Rajasthan Royals (RR) by 5 wickets at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Saturday (April 30). This ended their 8-match losing streak.
Rohit won the toss and opted to bowl first as his bowlers did a fine job to restrict RR to 158/6 with Jos Buttler top scoring with 67. Riley Meredith and Hrithik Shokeen took two wickets each.
MI chased down the target in the final over with four balls left as Suryakumar Yadav (51), Tilak Varma (35), Ishan Kishan (26) and Tim David (20*) playing handy knocks to seal a comfortable win.
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Rohit himself could only manage to score 2 runs as he was deceived by the extra bounce generated by off-spinner R Ashwin while playing the sweep shot as he handed a simple catch to Daryl Mitchell in the third over. The MI captain hasn't had a good season with the bat, scoring 155 runs in 9 matches at an average just over 17 with a best of 41.
His wife Ritika Sajdeh, who is with him in the team bubble, was also at the ground cheering for him and the MI team, but was left dejected with his early dismissal. Sitting nearby was R Ashwin's wife Prithi Narayanan as she walked towards Ritika and gave her a warm hug just few moments after her husband picked up Rohit's wicket.
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