Mumbai Indians (MI) batter Suryakumar Yadav played yet another fine knock in IPL 2025 and it massively helped his side in posting a fighting total of 184/7 in 20 overs against the Punjab Kings (PBKS) at the Sawai Mansingh stadium in Jaipur on Monday.
PBKS skipper Shreyas Iyer won the toss and asked MI to have a bat first and the side got off to a decent start thanks to the opening pair of Ryan Rickelton and Rohit Sharma. They put up 45 runs on the board in the first five overs before the former ended up losing his wicket to Marco Jansen.
Suryakumar Yadav provided stability to MI's batting order against PBKS
Suryakumar came out to bat at number three and tried to form a big partnership with Rohit, however the latter was dismissed by left-arm spinner Harpreet Brar for 24 runs. Both Tilak Varma and Will Jacks went on to lose their wickets for cheap, however Suryakumar kept the scoreboard ticking from the other end and didn't fall prey to the PBKS bowling attack.
Alongside skipper Hardik Pandya, the 34-year-old took MI's total to the 150-run mark. However, the Punjab-based franchise broke the important stand in the 17th over as Jansen got the wicket of Pandya for 26 runs.
Next batter, Naman Dhir once again played an impactful cameo and along with Suryakumar, provided MI witrh a strong finish. The duo targeted Vijaykumar Vyshak in the 19th over and smashed him for 23 runs. This was also the over where the India T20I skipper brought up his fifth half-century of the ongoing season.
It looked like the Mumbai-based franchise would make a push towards the 200-run mark in the final over, however they were stopped in their tracks by Arshdeep Singh, who dismissed both Suryakumar and Naman in the same over. On top of this, he gave away just three runs which saw him finish his four-over spell with figures of 2/28.
With the fifty, Suryakumar overtook former MI batter Sachin Tendulkar and became the player from the franchise to score the most runs in a single IPL campaign. The legendary batter had scored 618 runs back in the 2010 season of the cash-rich league and now that figure has finally been surpassed by the 34-year-old, who has 640 runs under his name in 14 matches so far this season.
It has already been a fantastic season for Suryakumar and if he can manage to score 60 runs more in the playoffs, then he will become just the third Indian player after Virat Kohli and Shubman Gill to surpass the 700-run mark in a single IPL season.