IPL 2017: Rising Pune Supergiant vs Mumbai Indians, 5 Talking Points

#5 Steve Smith’s captain’s knock sees Pune home

Smith continued his superb form with the bat and led his side to victory

Before the season, Rising Pune owner Sanjiv Goenka made a bold call to replace Dhoni as the skipper of his franchise. It was a risky move considering Dhoni’s wealth of experience and success as a captain across all formats.

To put things in perspective, this was the first ever time in 10 seasons of the IPL that Dhoni was not captaining his side. But, change was in order after Pune’s poor performance last year, and Steve Smith, one of the best batsmen in the world and successful Aussie skipper, was put in charge.

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How Steve Smith would take over the reigns was being watched with keen interest. Barring the decision to hand the final over to Dinda, he had a great day in his first outing as the captain.

Smith walked in at the cheap dismissal of Mayank Agarwal. Starting cautiously, he preferred letting Rahane do the bulk of the quick scoring while he was at it, but smartly changed gears after the latter’s fall. The first 25 runs of his innings were scored at just above a run-a-ball, but the remaining 60 odd runs came at a strike rate of 200. On the day, Smith overshadowed his more fancied hard-hitting teammates - Stokes and Dhoni – scoring the fifty in his captaincy debut for the franchise.