The Indian Premier moves deeper into the second half of the IPL 2025 campaign on Wednesday when the Sunrisers Hyderabad take on the Mumbai Indians in what promises to be some game of cricket in Hyderabad.
The Sunrisers have to make a move soon if they are going to achieve anything this season whereas Mumbai will move into third in the table with a win here and will be hunting down the top two over the remainder of the campaign.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
This season certainly hasn’t gone the way that the Sunrisers Hyderabad would have expected. They would have expected to get on the front foot and blow teams out of the water and to be fair when they have clicked any everything has come off for them they have looked like a team which would be nearly impossible to beat, however when they haven’t come off they have left themselves exposed to some heavy beatings and they either need some balance quickly or need to achieve perfection because they may need to win six of their last seven matches to extend their campaign.
The big problem that the Sunrisers have is they are built for their batting to blow teams out of the park but their openers have been hit and miss and rarely hit together and their middle order look bang out of form. None of that was the case last season and they made the final. This time around they are going to struggle to make the postseason because their bowling has been cannon fodder far too often and probably always will be at home where roads have to be prepared to suit their batters.
Mumbai Indians
The Mumbai Indians had their traditional slow start to the IPL 2025 season but they have come alive in recent times and are now looking like potential winners of the competition which is quite incredible because they are not the youngest side going around. Mumbai have won their last three matches, one of which was the reverse fixture against the Sunrisers, and if they make it four in succession here then they will end the day in third spot in the table.
The big ingredient to the turnaround for the Indians has been the availability of Jasprit Bumrah who has just been something of a cheat code in this competition. He has bowled in four innings, sending down 16 overs in total and he is going at just 7.43 an over which is pretty ridiculous. One or two other bowlers are assisting him too and that in turn has taken the pressure off the batters and as such they have been able to flourish much more too. It is a perfect combination.
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Key Players
Heinrich Klaasen hasn’t really broken free at all in this competition yet but you get the feeling he will need to have a strong second half of the campaign if the Sunrisers are to climb the table. With Nitish Kumar Reddy bang out of form it might be worth batting the South African at 4.
Rohit Sharma reminded everyone of his class in the previous match and he will be licking his lips at the thought of getting stuck into a Sunrisers bowling unit who are really struggling to stem the flow of runs this season.
Betting
Sunrisers Hyderabad matches this season have generally seen them win or get beaten heavily. Their defeats this season have been by five wickets, seven wickets, 80 runs, seven wickets and four wickets whereas their wins have been by 44 runs and eight wickets so Sunrisers matches haven’t really been close contests at all and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another that isn’t particularly close but I just can’t see a way in which Hyderabad get after this Mumbai Indians attack and do what they want against it.
The likes of Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya all have the potential to keep the Sunrisers batters honest but you wouldn’t really feel confident about saying that the reverse way so I’m a little surprised that the handicap for this one is only 4.5 wickets or 7.5 runs. The only Hyderabad defeat which would have covered that line was in the reverse meeting between these two when Mumbai clearly went about boosting their net run rate but they don’t need to do that here and therefore I fancy Mumbai to win this and cover the handicap in the process.
Tips
Back Mumbai Indians (-4.5wickets/7.5runs) to beat Sunrisers Hyderabad for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
