Follow UsMumbai Indians (MI) started their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 campaign at home—Wankhede Stadium—brilliantly, thrashing the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by 8 wickets and with 43 balls to spare. The match, a one-sided affair, saw two new stars emerge for the Mumbai Indians.
Signed at a base price of INR 1 crore, Ryan Rickelton came into the IPL after a brilliant Champions Trophy. However, in the first two matches, he was unable to impress with scores of 13 and 6 in his first two games.
However, in this third game, Rickleton showed the full range of his batting as the South African smashed 62 off 41 balls and remained unbeaten. He was the reason that KKR could not get back into the game despite getting the wickets of Rohit Sharma and Will Jacks early on.
Ashwani Kumar, who debuted in the IPL, turned out to be the best bowler for the Mumbai Indians, finishing with figures of 4/24. He got the wickets of Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, and Manish Pandey, as the Knight Riders could not recover.
His figures of 4/24 were the best by any Indian in IPL history.
Sunil Narine, who came in place of last game’s hero for KKR, Moeen Ali, failed on both fronts as he could score only a duck and went for 32 runs in his three overs. If he is not able to take wickets, one at least expects Narine to contain runs, but he could not even do that tonight.
After being asked to bat first, the entire Kolkata batting team did not seem interested in occupying the crease. It started with Narine exploiting all his stumps and Boult cleaning them up. Quinton de Kock followed and then there was a line which did not stop until the entire team was bowled out for 116 in 16.2 overs.