Samson’s Second Century of Season Leads Chennai to Big Win Over Mumbai in Indian Premier League

Mumbai: Sanju Samson hit his second century for Chennai Super Kings this season and Akeal Hosein demolished the Mumbai Indians top order with a four-wicket haul in the 103-run win in the Indian Premier League on Thursday.

Samson followed up his unbeaten century against Delhi Capitals with 101 off 54 balls to anchor Chennai at 207-6.

Hosein (4-17) shook up Mumbai’s chase in the powerplay with two wickets in his first two overs and fast bowler Mukesh Choudhary bowled Quinton de Kock for 7 before Mumbai were bowled out for 104 in 19 overs.

This was Mumbai’s worst defeat in the IPL and the first time they lost three consecutive matches at the Wankhede in a season.

Hosein caught young batter Danish Malewar off the first ball and then cleanly bowled Naman Dhir with a ball that spun, bounced and caught, and when de Kock dragged Choudhary’s ball back to the roots, Mumbai fell to 11-3 in the first 15 overs of the run chase.

Tilak Varma (37) and Suryakumar Yadav (35) were the only Mumbai batsmen to reach double figures but both of them could never make any breakthrough until they were caught up in Hosein’s return spell. Wrist spinner Noor Ahmad (2-23) then ended the chase by removing Hardik Pandya and Sherfane Rutherford from successive balls.

Earlier, Samson hit a hundred in the 10th over of his innings and hit six sixes despite Mumbai spinner Allah Ghazanfar briefly disrupting the flow of runs, making the score 2-25.

“It really feels great to score a century against MI at Wanhede,” Samson said. “We were losing a few wickets so I thought it was important to have an established batsman remaining and so I tried that and that’s what happened today.”

Skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad’s struggles continued, but his knock of 22 was the second-most in Chennai’s total, with Samson doing the bulk of the scoring with a strike rate of almost 200.

Two costly overs from Pandya (0-38) with the new ball gave Chennai a solid platform of 73-2 in the powerplay as both Gaikwad and Sarfaraz Khan (14) fell to spinners Ghazanfar and Mitchell Santner (1-44).

Chennai’s middle-order batsmen played cameo roles with Dewald Brevis (21 off 11 balls) and Jamie Overton (15 off 7 balls) scoring at a brisk pace, but it was Samson’s aggression in the death overs that saw Chennai breach the 200-run mark.

Samson was on 85 off 48 balls but kept the strike to himself in the last over and completed his second century with two sixes from Krish Bhagat (0-31) before nailing the last short ball to the mid-wicket boundary.

“We couldn’t cope after losing early wickets in the powerplay,” Pandya said. “We should have batted better. They batted on the same pitch… Sanju batted outstandingly and his batsmen kept coming and getting a good total.”

While Mumbai slipped to 8th position after just two wins in seven matches, Chennai rose to 5th position with a better net run rate than Delhi Capitals and Gujarat Titans.