Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders to slug it out for a final berth

KKR have an abysmal 5-15 head-to-head record against Mumbai Indians, who notched up twin victories over their rivals in the league stage of the tournament this year. In fact, Mumbai Indians had pulled off their first win of the season against KKR at the Wankhede stadium last month when they beat them by four wickets with just one ball to spare.

Mumbai are coming into the match after a 20-run defeat against Rising Pune Supergiant, while KKR defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by seven wickets via Duckworth-Lewis method in a rain-truncated eliminator on Wednesday.

Both Mumbai and KKR have won the IPL trophy twice in the last nine editions and a win will take them to the final against Rising Pune Supergiant to be played in Hyderabad on Sunday.

Mumbai's batting has been remarkable this season with openers Lendl Simmons and Parthiv Patel giving them good starts and skipper Rohit Sharma, Ambati Rayadu and Kieron Pollard firing in unison.

Adding to this, the Pandya brothers — Hardik and Krunal — have been exceptionally good whenever the team has needed them.

With 10 victories in the league stage, table-toppers MI have been in rampaging form and they would like to forget their defeat against Pune and rise to the big occasion.

In bowling, Mumbai may continue to open their attack with Sri Lankan Lasith Malinga and Kiwi Mitchell McClenaghan. Jasprit Bumrah has been their best death overs specialist and along with Hardik, he will have to play a key role to restrict KKR, which boasts of some big names like Chris Lynn, Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa, among others.

KKR would hope Lynn, who just scored six in the last match, comes to the party. Lynn had scored a quick-fire fifty off just 21 balls against Gujarat Lions on his return at Chinnaswamy stadium after recovering from an injury.

Lynn had an excellent start to the season when he stitched a record opening partnership of 184 with skipper Gambhir against Gujarat and went on to score an unbeaten 93.

Among others, KKR also boasts of Manish Pandey and Robin Uthappa, who have scored 396 and 387 runs respectively.

As far as their bowling is concerned, Chris Woakes (17 wickets) and Umesh Yadav (16 wickets) have been on song, and they have their task cut out to stop Simmons and Rohit at the top of the order, and Rayadu and Pollard in the middle.