The first IPL 2025 victory came to Mumbai Indians when they defeated Kolkata Knight Riders by eight wickets at Wankhede Stadium on Monday. The victory evolved from an outstanding bowling display and a composed offensive drive.
Hardik Pandya made a successful luck choice by choosing to bowl first when he won the toss during the match. Ashwani Kumar made history as a debutant when he secured his first IPL four-wicket haul while becoming the inaugural cricket bowler to notate this achievement in an IPL debut match. Sunil Narine became the first casualty of the match as Trent Boult dismissed him in the opening over of the KKR innings with a duck. This set the tone for an aggressive bowling performance by MI.
Throughout KKR’s batting inning, Deepak Chahar took de Kock’s wicket (1) in the second over which prevented their batting expansion. During the powerplay KKR managed a total of 41 runs while losing Venkatesh Iyer with three runs and Ajinkya Rahane for 11 runs. The bowler Hardik Pandya took out Angkrish Raghuvanshi for 26 runs during the match.
The brief fighting spirit of Rinku Singh (17), Manish Pandey (19) and Ramandeep Singh (22) was not enough to save KKR from being dismissed out for 116 runs during 16.2 overs. By the end of their batting innings Vignesh Puthur took a wicket to dismiss Harshit Rana (4).
The Mumbai Indians team entered the chase with clear intentions of success. The first innings started when opener Ryan Rickelton hit 62 runs from 41 balls and Suryakumar Yadav followed with an additional 27 not out to complete the game with a six. The two wickets Andre Russell secured for KKR were not enough to stop the chasing Mumbai Indians team. Mumbai Indians finished their innings at 121/2 when they reached the target by 43 balls before the end of their 12.5-over hunt to win their first match of IPL 2025.
