It’s advantage Mumbai Indians

Mumbai Indians skipper Harmanpreet Kaur slams one against Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the Brabourne Stadium on Tuesday. Pics/Atul Kamble

Mumbai Indians, winners of the inaugural WPL edition in 2023, have a chance to regain the title after failing to enter the final last year.

The Harmanpreet Kaur-led MI will be playing their third match in four days at the Brabourne Stadium, and second within a week against Gujarat Giants, who have been having their best WPL season in three years.

GG in third place

Having won a combined total of four matches in the first two seasons, GG have won four this season alone to finish third in the table and be able to play in the Playoffs.

History does not favour GG as they have lost all their six encounters against MI. But, Thursday is a fresh game and all that happened in the past does not count much except for the learnings from them.

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"We've come into this tournament from Day One saying we're going to stay level, whether we win or lose any game. That'll be the same tonight [Monday night] when we go into the knockout. When we won one game and lost three, we knew we just weren't playing quite at our best, but when we got pretty close to that, we could beat any team in the competition.

"We made a couple of little tweaks to our set-up and then started playing some fantastic cricket," head coach of GG, Michael Klinger said
after the nine-run loss to MI on Monday.

MI bowling coach and mentor Jhulan Goswami looked positively at the Eliminator. "Gujarat Giants are a quality team. I hope there will be a good contest between MI and GG, and we are looking forward to this game and whatever learnings from the RCB game, we will discuss and come out with a fresh plan. It's not easy coming from Lucknow and playing two back-to-back games in different weather and different conditions," she said on Tuesday night.

Goswami looked at the positive side of facing GG: "We know the condition better. We know that it is going to be a high-scoring game, the outfield is going to be electrifying.

One extra game for MI

"We thought we might win this game [against RCB] and go straight to the final and the number of games will be less. But, we are going to play against GG and it is better that you know the conditions. You will be more aware of all those things and just implement them in the right way.

Whatever has been planned, just go there and execute in the right way."