{"id":591742,"date":"2026-04-07T18:15:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/591742\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:15:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:15:22","slug":"hardik-returns-as-mi-bowl-in-11-overs-a-side-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/591742\/","title":{"rendered":"Hardik returns as MI bowl in 11-overs-a-side contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toss Mumbai Indians choose to bowl vs Rajasthan Royals <\/p>\n

After a delay of more than three hours due to persistent rain, Mumbai Indians<\/a> (MI) captain Hardik Pandya<\/a> won the toss and had no hesitation to field against Rajasthan Royals<\/a> (RR) in Guwahati<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The match was reduced to 11 overs a side, with a 3.2-over powerplay. There was continuous rain in Guwahati for more than four hours, with the toss finally taking place at 9.55pm, local time and play starting at 10.10pm.<\/p>\n

The most important news from the MI camp was the return of Hardik, who missed the game against Delhi Capitals (DC) due to illness. With the surface under covers for a while, the ball is expected to move around early. Trent Boult came back into the side, with Corbin Bosch and Mitchell Santner missing out. Legspinner Mayank Markande also missed out.<\/p>\n

AM Ghazanfar was also included in the starting XI, with MI opting for three overseas players first up. Sherfane Rutherford is expected to be the Impact Player.<\/p>\n

RR captain Riyan Parag also wanted to bowl, but didn’t expect the moisture to play that big a role. RR are going with an unchanged side. They could bring in Ravi Bishnoi as Impact Player but fast bowler Brijesh Sharma<\/a> is also an option in case the surface is not conducive to spin.<\/p>\n

RR are coming into the game eyeing a hat-trick of wins and a chance to move to the top of the points table. They hardly broke a sweat in brushing aside Chennai Super Kings in their opening game before overcoming Gujarat Titans in a last-over finish in Ahmedabad.<\/p>\n

MI, meanwhile, began their tournament with a six-wicket victory over Kolkata Knight Riders before they lost to DC by six wickets.<\/p>\n

Rajasthan Royals: 1 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 2 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 3 Dhruv Jurel (wk), 4 Riyan Parag (capt), 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Donovan Ferreira, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Jofra Archer, 9 Nandre Burger, 10 Tushar Deshpande, 11 Sandeep Sharma
Bench: Ravi Bishnoi, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Brijesh Sharma, Ravi Bishnoi, Shubham Dubey.<\/p>\n

Mumbai Indians: 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Ryan Rickelton (wk), 3 Tilak Varma, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Hardik Pandya (capt), 6 Naman Dhir, 7 Shardul Thakur, 8 Deepak Chahar, 9 AM Ghazanfar, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Jasprit Bumrah
Bench: Ashwani Kumar, Sherfane Rutherford, Corbin Bosch, Robin Minz, Raj Bawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toss Mumbai Indians choose to bowl vs Rajasthan Royals After a delay of more than three hours due…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-591742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}