Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Mumbai Indians, 56th Match - Live Cricket Score, Commentary

Sandeep wins the QdK duel

Change of pace on tacky wickets can make best of batsmen look clumsy but if you know what's coming and can second-guess the variations to perfection, you an pull off the two towering sixes that the South African opener just did. He hit them over deep square leg and long on.

Sandeep then bowled a full toss outside the off-stump that the charged up de Kock chased after and ended up playing onto his stumps. MI are two down inside the PP!

Sandeep Sharma strikes!

And Rohit Sharma is gone early in his comeback game. David Warner takes a sharp catch at mid-off to give Sandeep Sharma his eighth powerplay wicket this season. Superb bowling this from Sandeep. He's been a smart bowler in these slow conditions, as he showed in SRH's win over RCB a few days ago.

He's done it tonight again, with a brilliant knuckle ball that. Rohit was looking to play his favourite shot over the mid-off fielder but had to check it at the last minute because the ball came slower than he'd anticipated. The result was a chip to Warner at mid-off. Good start for SRH.

Not the bowler Rohit would've wanted to face in his comeback game after a hamstring injury...could be a tough match-up, this.

Rohit's inclusion today is rather intriguing. This comes on the day BCCI president Sourav Ganguly advised him to wait until full recovery and not risk aggravating his hamstring injury. ICYMI, he was not named in the India squads for the upcoming tour of Australia, and is one of the two players who are to be assessed by BCCI's medical team.

Line-ups...

SRH:David Warner(c), Wriddhiman Saha(w), Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Priyam Garg, Jason Holder, Abdul Samad, Rashid Khan, Shahbaz Nadeem, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan

MI:Rohit Sharma(c), Quinton de Kock(w), Suryakumar Yadav, Saurabh Tiwary, Ishan Kishan, Krunal Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rahul Chahar, James Pattinson, Dhawal Kulkarni

TOSS: SRH win toss, opt to bowl first. Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult rested.

BIG NEWS:Rohit Sharma seems to be back. He's walked out for the toss.

STAT:Never before has a team had two uncapped players hitting 400 runs in a season for them. We could see that record break tonight...

Track record at Sharjah...

MI: Played 2 | Won 2 | Lost 0

SRH: Play 2 | Won 1 | Lost 1

The Sharjah sub-plot for these two sides is interesting. One of MI's win at the venue was against SRH, who actually bowled well for majority of the innings at a time when conditions were perfect for batting. MI managed to go past the 200-run mark courtesy Krunal Pandya's four-ball 20 at the end, and SRH couldn't chase that down.

However, SRH's win at the venue came just three days ago when David Warner won the toss, put RCB in and his bowlers did an exceptional job of restricting them to just 120. And then there was dew... lot's of it which made it impossible for the team defending the total.

In conclusion, Sharjah's been rather notorious with conditions and it's come to a stage where win toss, bowl first has been the way to go in order to avoid having to grip a wet ball later on.

Prelude - Can SRH do the double over best team of the tournament?

Even the thought of that seems daunting but that's what SRH need to do if they are to keep their run of making it to the playoffs in every season since 2016 intact.

Like many of the mid-table stragglers, SRH too have had a very inconsistent season - accentuated by their middle-order woes - but with three wins in the last four games, here they are, with their fate in their own hands... and by association, KKR's too. Delhi Capitals' victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore last night took both their NRRs above and beyond KKR's, leaving Eoin Morgan's side hoping for MI to be at their best when they go up against SRH in the very last league stage game.

For SRH, the equation is simple, without any convuluted sub-clauses: win and go through, lose and go home.

What's in the game for MI, you ask? Good question. They've been thoroughly ruthless, and had the top spot locked in even before the teams below them got into a scuffle for the remaining three places. They have 18 points, and already know who they face in the first Qualifier on November 5 - Delhi Capitals in Dubai. So what do they do tonight? Give some of their regular performers a rest? Or chase after the intangible momentum that players keep talking about. Knowing them and their levels of efficiency this year, it's highly likely they'll do both and dump SRH out in the process.

Whichever way it goes, it promises to be a fascinating game - a perfect end to one of the most incredible league-stages in IPL history.