Riding on Jofra Archer’s inspirational all-round effort, Rajasthan Royals defeated Mumbai Indians by 30 runs to advance to the IPL playoffs on Sunday.
The Royals, 16 points after their win over MI, completed the knockouts line-up along with Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Gujarat Titans and Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Suryakumar Yadav (60) was involved in two good partnerships — a 63 for the fourth wicket with Will Jacks (33) and a 48 with skipper Hardik Pandya (34, 16b) for the sixth wicket but MI failed to chase down the target of 206.
They were kept to 175 for nine, courtesy Archer’s wonderful spell (3/17 in 4 overs).
Earlier, Archer did his bit with the bat as well, cracking a 15-ball 32 to lift RR to a par 205 for eight.
Other than Archer, Yashasvi Jasiawal (27), Dhruv Jurel (38) and Dasun Shanaka (28) made runs for the Royals.
Pacers Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur plucked a couple of wickets each.
Brief scores:
Rajasthan Royals: 205/8 in 20 overs (Dhruv Jurel 38, Jofra Archer 32; Deepak Chahar 2/43) beat Mumbai Indians: 175/9 in 20 overs (Suryakumar Yadav 60, Hardik Pandya 34; Jofra Archer 3/17, Brijesh Sharma 2/26 ) by 30 runs.
