Captain Krunal Pandya's team understands the pain of being eliminated from the Lucknow Eliminator and the team would like to avoid last year's mistake. Lucknow was out of the league last year as well after losing in the eliminator. However, his performance this season has not been much better than Mumbai. Both had eight wins each and Lucknow finished third with one point more than Mumbai.
Both the teams will clash for the first time at the Chepauk Stadium in Chennai. However, the Lucknow team has not lost to Mumbai in the league. The Lucknow side have won their last three matches against Mumbai and will look to maintain their target by registering their fourth win in a row. Mumbai's performance in the Eliminator has been poor. He has played three eliminator matches and out of three he has lost two and drawn one.
The team that loses in this eliminator match will be out of the season. The winning team will have to play one more match to reach the final. The losing team of Qualifier-1 will play against the winning team of Eliminator in Qualifier-2 and the winner of this match will reach the final. Gujarat Titans had to face defeat against Chennai Super Kings in Qualifier-1. In such a situation, Gujarat will now have to play Qualifier-2. The winning team from Lucknow and Mumbai will play Qualifier-2. The journey of the losing team will end here.
Captain Krunal has made good use of the available options in the team. Leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi will have to play an important role in stopping the Mumbai batsmen. Apart from them, bowlers like Naveen-ul-Haq, Avesh Khan, Krunal and experienced Amit Mishra will also have to contribute. Marcus Stoinis, Kyle Myse and Nicholas Pooran have performed brilliantly in batting. All three have made the team name in many matches on their own.
In Chennai, the Mumbai team was defeated by the Super Kings due to the poor performance of the batsmen, but in the recent matches, Suryakumar Yadav, Cameron Green have taken Mumbai to the playoffs with their strong batting. The team will be hoping for a good performance from him against Lucknow as well. Barring Behrendorff, Mumbai's pace attack is weak. However, there are high hopes from experienced spinner Piyush Chawla.
LSG: Kyle Mayers, Quinton Dickock (wk), Prerak Mankad, Marcus Stoinis, Krunal Pandya (c), Nicholas Pooran, Ayush Badoni, Krishnappa Gautam, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohsin Khan, Yash Thakur.
MI: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Ishan Kishan (Wicket-keeper), Cameron Green, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Verma/Vishnu Vinod, Nehal Wadhera, Tim David, Chris Jordan, Piyush Chawla, Akash Madhwal, Hrithik Shokeen.
