Gujarat Lions chose to bat v Mumbai Indians
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Can Irfan Pathan impress upon his return to the IPL fold? © BCCI
Suresh Raina won the toss and surprised everybody by choosing to bat first at the chase-friendly Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot. Only thrice has an IPL match been won there by a side batting first, and not even once by Gujarat Lions. The reason was an unusually dry pitch, which Mumbai Indians considered, but would have bowled anyway.
Lions made one forced change, with seamer Nathu Singh missing out with a sore back. In his place came Irfan Pathan, playing for his sixth IPL team.
Mumbai welcomed back a fit-again Krunal Pandya, and also brought back Lasith Malinga ahead of Mitchell Johnson. This ground doesn’t have great numbers for left-arm quicks: 66 balls, 116 runs, two wickets.
Gujarat Lions 1 Brendon McCullum, 2 Ishan Kishan, 3 Suresh Raina (capt.), 4 Aaron Finch, 5 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 James Faulkner, 8 Irfan Pathan, 9 Andrew Tye, 10 Basil Thampi, 11 Ankit Soni
Mumbai Indians 1 Parthiv Patel (wk), 2 Jos Buttler, 3 Nitish Rana, 4 Rohit Sharma (capt.), 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Mitchell McClenaghan, 10 Lasith Malinga, 11 Jasprit Bumrah
Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo