Mumbai Indians won the toss and elected to bowl first against Sunrisers Hyderabad in what is a must-win encounter for the hosts in their last preliminary league match in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 at the Wankhede Stadium, here on Sunday afternoon.
Mumbai Indians need to win this match by a big margin and hope that Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) either lose their match or have a no-result in their encounter with Gujarat Titans in Bangalore in the second match of the day.
Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma said the conditions and nature of the pitch prompted him to opt to field first. He said his team is not worrying too much about the Playoffs spot and is concentrating on playing well.
"(Going by) Just the nature of the pitch and because we're comfortable chasing. The pitch is a bit dry, it'll get easier to bat as the sun sets. We just want to win, not how or by how much even though a lot of things are involved. We aren't thinking too far ahead. We're quite familiar with the conditions, guys have responded well. At the end of the day, you just have to play well," Rohit said at the toss.
Mumbai made one change in their playing XI, bringing in Kumar Kartikeya to replace Hrithik Shokeen.
On the other hand, Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper Aiden Markram is looking forward to ending IPL 2023 on a strong note as they brought in express pacer Umran Malik into the playing XI.
"We'd like to finish strong. Not the campaign we'd have liked. Opportunity for us to test our bench strength. Hopefully, they'll come good. It's a high-scoring venue, a great chance for our batters to be fearless. Hopefully, we can click as a batting unit," said Markram.
Playing XIs:
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma (c), Ishan Kishan (wk), Cameron Green, Suryakumar Yadav, Tim David, Nehal Wadhera, Chris Jordan, Piyush Chawla, Jason Behrendorff, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal.
Substitutes: Ramandeep Singh, Vishnu Vinod. Tristan Stubbs, Tilak Varma, Sandeep Warrier
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Mayank Agarwal, Vivrant Sharma, Aiden Markram (c), Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Harry Brook, Nitish Reddy, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Mayank Dagar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umran Malik
Substitutes: Mayank Markande, Rahul Tripathi, Abdul Samad, Kartik Tyagi, Akeal Hosein.