Friday will see the winless Mumbai Indians play host at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai to the Chennai Super Kings, who have started with two successive wins, and who alongside the Rajasthan Royals are the only two teams remaining with 100% winning records in the Pepsi Indian Premier League (IPL) 2015.
Having lost their opening three fixtures, things got even worse for Mumbai on Tuesday, when their Australian international Aaron Finch pulled up with a hamstring injury after running a single during the defeat by the Royals. The player underwent a scan on Wednesday, and then revealed through social media that the results did not look good.
Mumbai’s biggest problem during the early part of the season, is the inability of the top of their batting order to post a decent start that the likes of the Kiwi Corey Anderson and West Indian Kieron Pollard can build on, with their ability to accelerate the scoring towards the end of the innings.
Unless they can find a solution to the problem, and now they have to do so without Finch, then they are likely to have a tough task on their hands against the perennial title challengers the Super Kings.
Although Chennai opened their campaign with a hard fought victory against the Delhi Daredevils, a match that they could easily have lost, if Delhi had gotten their batting tactics right when chasing a mere 150. They then hit their straps when they faced the Sunrisers in their following fixtures, led by New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum who hit a stunning century off of just 56 balls.
It looks unlikely that Mumbai will bring their losing sequence to an end on Friday, but they could some solace in their performance last year, when they failed to win a match in the early stages, that were held in the UAE, but fought back to qualify for the semi-finals.