Piyush Chawla's Magical Spin Earns Him Third Spot in IPL 2023 Purple Cap Race

Mumbai Indians progressed to Qualifier 2 of the Indian Premier League 2023 with an emphatic win against Lucknow Super Giants in an eliminator contest on Wednesday. The five-time IPL champions played impressive cricket and outclassed LSG in all three departments as rookie pacer Akash Madhwal was the best performer with a half-century. The Uttarakhand pacer returned impressive figures of 5 for 5 in his 3.3 overs as Mumbai Indians beat Lucknow Supergiants by 81 runs at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.

Winning the toss on a difficult pitch, Mumbai were 182/8, with Cameron Green and Suryakumar Yadav scoring 41 and 33 respectively, while Tilak Verma scored 26 off 22 balls.

Impact player Nehal Vadhera played an important innings of 23 runs off 12 balls, including 14 runs in the last over and took Mumbai to a challenging score. In reply, Lucknow were 68/2 in eight overs chasing 183 runs. But from there they fell like cards to be bowled out for 101 in 16.3 overs.

Mega Clash also had an impact on the Orange Cap and Purple Cap rosters.

Orange hat

Faf du Plessis is leading the race for the Orange Cap, while Shubman Gill is right behind him as he reduced the lead to 42 against Chennai Super Kings in Qualifier 1. Du Plessis has been ruled out of IPL 2023 after RCB's ouster. He finished his run tally with 730 runs in 14 matches, while Shubman is behind with 722 runs. The Gujarat Titans opener still has a chance to surpass the RCB skipper's tally in Qualifier 2 which will be played against Mumbai Indians at his favorite venue Ahmedabad.

While Suryakumar Yadav for Mumbai Indians is at the seventh position with 544 runs. The chances of him getting the Orange Cap are slim but back-to-back hundreds could do the magic for him. In the race for the Purple Cap, Mohammed Shami tops the tally with one wicket more than his teammate Rashid Khan. After taking two wickets in Qualifier 1 against CSK on Tuesday night, Shami tops the tally with 26 wickets.

While playing an off-night with the ball at Chepauk on Tuesday, Rashid took just one wicket and is second in the race for the Purple Cap with 25 wickets. Meanwhile, with the important wicket of Krunal Pandya on Wednesday, Piyush Chawla moved up to the third position with 21 wickets.