The match will be Mumbai Indians’ first home match of the IPL 2023. In their first match, they went down by eight wickets against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
Chennai Super Kings bounced back to a 12-run win against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) after losing their opener against Gujarat Titans by five wickets at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
The bowling units of both Mumbai and Chennai look off-coloured and with a lot of uncertainty on cards, let’s have a look at top four bowlers who can end up with most wickets in the MI vs CSK match.
Moeen Ali: The England left-arm spinner picked four wickets for 26 runs during CSK’s last match against Lucknow Super Giants and eyes will be on him again. The domestic bowlers are yet to shine for the four-time champions and that makes the 35-year-old the leading contender to finish as CSK’s highest wicket-taker in the match.
At the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Moeen has picked eight wickets in seven matches at an average of 12.87 and an economy of 6.11.
Deepak Chahar: The pacer has looked highly off-coloured in the first two matches and would be hoping for return to form against Mumbai Indians – a team against which he has performed decently.
In the eleven matches against them, he has picked eleven wickets at an average of 27.18 and an economy of 7.93. He has picked two wickets at an economy of five in one match at Wankhede Stadium.
Jofra Archer: The express pacer will come across as a major threat to the Chennai Super Kings batters. His pace and bounce is going to cause a lot of problems for players like Ben Stokes, Dhoni and Amabati Rayudu – who are either out of form or do not play professional cricket regularly.
It will be England pacer’s first home match for Mumbai Indians and the crowd would get behind him to motivate him further. Archer has picked 167 wickets in 131 matches at an average of 7.93 and an economy of 7.64.
Piyush Chawla: Veteran leg-spinner Piyush Chawla will also be in contention to pick most wickets in the MI vs CSK clash on Saturday. On a day when MI bowlers were at the receiving end of a massive onslaught from RCB batters, Chawla gave away just 26 runs in four overs.
Four of the other five bowlers used leaked more than 10 runs per over. Archer had the second best economy rate of 8.2 after Chawla. He has played 20 matches against CSK and picked 19 wickets at an average of 29.26 and an economy of 8.36.
