Preview SRH vs MI IPL 2021, Match 31, May 4th, Arun Jaitley Stadium. SRH vs MI head to head player stats and records. Team news and match predictions for SRH vs MI.
Key match stats SRH vs MI preview
Venue Stats – Arun Jaitley Stadium
- Average first innings: 163
- Average first innings winning score: 180
- Average powerplay score: 48
- All-time win % batting 1st vs batting 2nd: 47% / 51%
Find full venue stats and records here
Team form SRH vs MI preview
- SRH – LLLWL
- MI – WWLLW
- Recent meetings: IPL 2021, MI won by 13 runs, IPL 2020, MI won by 34 runs, SRH won by 10 wickets
SRH vs MI preview
For SRH the 2021 IPL season is fast turning into a nightmare with the team lacking any kind of confidence or cohesion. The replacement of David Warner as captain with Kane Williamson is a curious decision but as we’ve been writing about for the past few weeks, so many of the Sunrisers choices in regards selection and tactics during IPL 2021 have left a lot to be desired.
In their previous outing against Rajasthan Royals, they also received some criticism for bowling Rashid Khan out early in the innings. Personally, I thought they got their tactics spot on with Rashid having such a good record against Buttler as we indicated in our match preview and the fact that the Royals are so dependant on their top order to get them runs. Had they have knocked over the 2 right handers then Mohammed Nabi would have been an excellent match-up against the left handers in the middle order.
What was lacking from Sunrisers though was execution of even basic skills – they dropped both Samson and Buttler – to back up those plans. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter who your captain is if you can’t execute your basic skills and this has been a problem for SRH all season. In a league as close and competitive as the IPL, the successful teams will be the ones who do the simple things on a consistent basis with a little bit of star quality thrown in for good measure.
Speaking of star quality, Mumbai Indians are beginning to show some of theirs with a magnificent chase in their last game at this venue headed by the evergreen Kieron Pollard. The big man put in a fantastic all-round performance to underline his continued importance to the franchise that he has been at since the IPL’s inception. It was also a good win for me personally as well because I put money on MI winning it from about the 12th over of their chase at very generous odds of 6.0 as shown in my tweet above.
SRH vs MI head to head stats
SRH bowling vs MI batting
We’ve already mentioned the Sunrisers decision to bowl Rashid Khan earlier in the innings than you’d normally expect and beyond the advantageous match up they hoped it would present against RR is the desperation that SRH have to get early break throughs. Prior to that game the Sunrisers had taken just 3 wickets in the powerplay all tournament with Rashid adding a 4th when he got rid of Yashasvi Jaiswal early on. Without any kind of penetration up front, SRH are always left chasing games and the table doesn’t lie when it shows they aren’t particularly good at that!
In this game they also come up against a Mumbai Indians side whose default plan is to not lose wickets in the powerplay and build themselves into a strong position in order to let their powerful middle order go big later in the innings. Our graph above shows that MI have lost the fewest wickets in the powerplay during IPL 2021. The question then is how can SRH disrupt this Mumbai Indians top order?
If SRH are guided by head to head stats to choose their match-ups once again then they’ll undoubtedly want to get Sandeep Sharma on against his name sake Rohit.
Of course the problem for Sandeep and most of the SRH bowling attack is that when the ball doesn’t swing, and it hasn’t at the venues they’ve played at, then they become exposed as the medium-fast bowlers that they are. The lack then of genuine pace in this Sunrisers squad becomes apparent and teams are left knowing that if they can navigate Rashid Khan’s 4 overs then there is very little threat elsewhere. SRH may well look at bringing in Jason Holder to add a little variety to their attack for this game. While by no means quick, Holder’s height and the bounce he creates will at least provide a different problem for the MI batsmen.
Several SRH players have had disappointing seasons but the form and fitness of Buvi have been a real issue for the men in orange. Following his exploits for India in the white ball games against England, it looked like Buvi was back to his best but so far he’s managed just 3 wickets from 5 matches and in this game he faces an opening pair who he has struggled to dislodge in past IPL encounters.
MI bowling vs SRH batting
To balance out our criticism of SRH’s powerplay bowling, we should probably point out that Mumbai Indians themselves have also struggled to get early break throughs in IPL 2021. The selection of Dhawal Kulkarni in their previous match against CSK was almost certainly a recognition that they need a little more penetration in the early stages of the innings if they are going to defend their title this year and it’s that 3rd seamer role that is causing the champions the most headaches with none of the options they’ve tried to date really grabbing their opportunity.
With Warner dropped, SRH opted to promote Manish Pandey to open the batting. For his part, Pandey has a pretty good head to head record against all the bowlers that MI have used in IPL 2021.
Again though, we are looking at an SRH side who are likely to be very dependant on their top 3 (whoever they are) to get them a good score in this fixture. In the reverse fixture earlier in the season, SRH were seemingly heading towards a victory when Warner and Bairstow were at the crease but they collapsed from a position of 67 without loss to 137 all out once that partnership was broken.
Following another collapse against the Royals in their last match, SRH now have the 2nd worst strike rate at the death. It’s difficult to see who out of the many options they’ve tried in the middle and lower order will be able to turn that around, especially against a side like Mumbai Indians who have been very strong with the ball during the middle and late stages of an innings.
All IPL player head to head records can be found here
