How a timely ball change sparked MI’s stunning comeback win

New Delhi, Apr 14: In the run-up to IPL 2025, the ruling to allow the team bowling second in an evening match to get the ball changed anytime after the eleventh over, in a bid to counter the dew factor, was cited by many insiders in the tournament as good news for a side defending totals.

At the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Sunday evening, the ball change rule brought out a decisive twist in the Mumbai Indians’ quest to defend 205/5 on a pitch that wasn’t flat per se. Just after Jasprit Bumrah removed Axar Patel, MI opted to make the ball change. It made sense, as super soppers were at work during the innings break and timeout to ensure dew didn’t have an upper hand.

A ball change followed shortly after Jasprit Bumrah removed Axar Patel, and the game was about to take a decisive twist. Karn Sharma, coming in as the impact player for MI, and Mitchell Santner managed to get better control over their craft with the changed ball, which also crucially helped them extract extra bounce, turn and grip.

It meant that the cross-bat shots and lofts, which were the staple shots of batters in the match so far owing to the 60m and 66m square boundaries, became the ones fraught with high risk. That strategy worked well for MI, as Karn had Tristan Stubbs holing out to long-off and then caught the edge off KL Rahul’s booming sweep off his own bowling.

With Karn being at the forefront of MI’s comeback with the changed ball, DC suddenly were in trouble, as they had just four wickets in hand in the face of the equation becoming 46 runs needed off 27 balls. That became more dire when Trent Boult executed five yorkers in a three-run 17th over.

The usual expectation from MI was that they would bowl Hardik Pandya for the 18th and 20th overs while giving Bumrah the penultimate over. But MI sprung a surprise by making Santner bowl the 18th, which raised a few eyebrows, and when Vipraj Nigam hit him for a six and a four on the first two balls, DC threatened to grab another heist of a victory, just like they did against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in Visakhapatnam.

But it was all a part of the setup Santner had in his mind – the boundaries came off deliveries whose speeds were above 90 km/h. On seeing Nigam dance down the pitch early on the fifth ball, Santner considerably slowed the delivery coming in from round the wicket and pushed it wide outside the off-stump.

Nigam had no time to respond to Santner’s slowest ball in the game, and he was easily stumped by Ryan Rickleton. After that, despite Ashutosh swatting Bumrah for two fours, MI conjured up three run-outs to grab the win in the penultimate over, including Santner getting a direct hit right from short mid-wicket.

“You can say that it (the ball change) was a game-changing moment. When the ball was going one way, it was wet while it was coming back. But the situation was such that we had to take wickets, as they were going at 10-11 runs per over. So, my and Mitchell Santner's role was to take wickets in between. When a new seam comes into play after the ball change, the seam is upright, so it gives you purchase from the wicket, and that was beneficial.