IPL 2018: Match 37, MI vs KKR – Most Valuable and Liable Player of the game

Mumbai Indians (MI) once again have started to peak at the business end of the tournament as they defeated the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in a close encounter by 13 runs. After losing the toss, the home team’s openers shared a 91-run stand in just 56 balls but the middle order failed to finish things on a high. Defending a total of 181, Mumbai sent back the KKR openers early on but the 84-run stand between Robin Uthappa and Nitish Rana threatened to take the game away. A collective bowling effort in the last eight overs ensured Mumbai didn’t repeat any mistakes that they committed in the first half.

Hardik Pandya has been quite effective with the ball in this tournament as he now owns the purple cap with 14 wickets to his name. The all-rounder picked up two crucial wickets in this game and conceded only 19 runs in his four overs. Pandya did struggle to get going with the bat managing only a 20-ball 35* but that helped him gain a match value of 71 lakhs as per the CricTracker’s Player Value Algorithm. Kolkata Knight Riders‘ chinaman spinner Kuldeep Yadav turned out to be the Liable Player of the Match as his contributions was limited to two wicketless overs.

Suryakumar Yadav continued his rich form in the tournament with his 4th fifty of this IPL to extend his season aggregate to 399 runs. The MI opener scored a 39-ball 59 against his former IPL team which helped him to gain a match value of 64.5 lakhs. Robin Uthappa finally scored a fifty in this season after a quite a few scores of 30s. He earned a value of 60 lakhs for his 35-ball 54 but finished on the losing side. Dinesh Karthik earned a value of 44.5 lakhs from this match for his unbeaten 36 which wasn’t enough to take his team over the line.

MI’s wicketkeeper Ishan Kishan had no real contribution to make as he didn’t get a chance to bat and his team’s bowlers didn’t produce any chance for him behind the stumps. Mayank Markande’s first participation in the match was the dropped catch of Robin Uthappa and it proved to be a costly over. However, he removed the Karnataka batsman to bring MI back into the game. He earned a value of 14.5 lakhs from this match which is 10.15 times his average match salary.