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Hours before their fifth match in the IPL 2024 and the first of the season against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, hosts Mumbai Indians announced a change in their squad. Saurashtra’s wicketkeeper-batter Harvik Desai was added to the MI squad as a replacement for Vishnu Vinod, who has been ruled out of the 17th edition of the tournament with an injury to his left forearm injury.
“Wicket-keeper batter Vishnu Vinod has been ruled out of the remainder of the IPL 2024 owing to an injury to his forearm. The Mumbai Indians have signed Saurashtra wicket-keeper batter Harvik Desai as a replacement,” BCCI said in a release on Thursday.
The 24-year-old Harvik has a century in all three formats of the game and was a member of the India U19 team that won the World Cup in 2018. This will be Desai’s maiden IPL stint. He has played 27 T20s, 40 List A and 46 First Class games for Saurashtra.
Desai’s T20 numbers are quite impressive. He has notched up 691 runs in 27 outings at a good strike rate of 134.17. He, however, is unlikely to get a game as Ishan Kishan is the first-choice keeper-batter for MI.
Under new captain Hardik Pandya, MI did not get off to an ideal start in this season. The five-time champions lost their first three matches of the tournament before finally getting on the board with a win against the Delhi Capitals. They have been bolstered by the return of Suryakumar Yadav, who missed the first three matches due to injury.
SKY was dismissed for a duck against DC but is expected to come good sooner rather than later. Captain Hardik too needs to put up consistent shows with the bat. His strike rate in the middle overs has been an issue. Although he did not bowl against DC, he was seen bowling in full tilt in the practice sessions ahead of the RCB match. One should not be surprised if the ace all-rounder completes his quota against RCB.
Having lost four out of their five matches so far, RCB are under severe pressure to bounce back. They are now faced with an uphill task given that their overseas batters have flopped collectively and bowling has also not clicked together.
Mumbai Indians Squad IPL 2024: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi, Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Thushara, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai, Nehal Wadhera, Luke Wood.
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