Familiar foes and the two most successful teams of the IPL Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings clash in a mouth-watering final here on Sunday, following a rather eventful season that produced some unprecedented moments on the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It can\u2019t be disputed that Mumbai go into \nthe final as the favourites, having beaten CSK as many as three times \nearlier in the tournament, including in the Qualifier 1 at Chennai, on \nTuesday.Rohit Sharma-led Mumbai can certainly take confidence out of the\n fact that they have won three out of the four finals they have been \npart of, including the two against CSK in 2013 and 2015. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For \nthree-time champions CSK, who have entered their eighth final, it has \nbeen another remarkable season after last year when they made a \ntriumphant return having served a two-year suspension.With the World Cup\n beginning right after the IPL, the league had additional significance \nfor tainted Australian stars–Steve Smith and David Warner–who made a \nsuccessful return after serving out one-year bans for their role in the \nball-tampering scandal in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warner especially made a \nroaring return by amassing 692 runs and formed the most dangerous \nopening pairing this season alongside Jonny Bairstow. The left-handed \nopener, who is back in Australia for the World Cup preparation, is set \nto end as the tournament\u2019s highest run-getter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For India\u2019s very \nown Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul, it was also a tournament to remember \nwith both hitting top-gear ahead of the World Cup.Having served a BCCI \nsuspension for their outrageous comments on women during a TV show, \nPandya and Rahul got their act together and proved match-winners for \ntheir respective teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pandya is not done yet and expect him to \ndeliver a match-winning performance for Mumbai in the final. He and \nKKR\u2019s Andre Russell elevated power hitting to another level with their \nsensational stroke play.Besides producing plenty of on-field moments to \nsavour, IPL 2019 had its fair share of controversies. Amongst the ones \nthat stood out involved KXIP skipper Ravichandran Ashwin and talismanic \nCSK captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early into the competition, \nAshwin triggered a massive \u2018spirit of cricket\u2019 debate in the entire \ncricketing fraternity by \u2018Mankading\u2019 Jos Buttler who was backing up at \nthe non-striker\u2019s end. There were some who backed Ashwin\u2019s act, while \nsome were against it. The controversial incident even attracted the \nattention of the MCC, the custodian of the game\u2019s laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two weeks\n later, none other than Dhoni\u2019s conduct was questioned after he stormed \nonto the pitch from the dugout to dispute a no-ball call. It was a rare \nsight of Dhoni losing his cool. \n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Familiar foes and the two most successful teams of the IPL Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings clash in a mouth-watering final here on Sunday, following a rather eventful season that produced some unprecedented moments on the field. It can\u2019t be disputed that Mumbai go into the final as the favourites, having beaten CSK as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61121,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61119\/revisions\/61121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}