Lucknow Super Giants beat Mumbai Indians by 18 runs to hand them their sixth loss in six games at the Brabourne Stadium on Saturday.

With a scintillating 56-ball century in his 100th IPL game, KL Rahul (103* off 60 balls) made batting seem like a walk in the park to help his team put 199 runs on the board. Rahul, who played a captain’s knock, continued his impressive record against MI by smashing nine fours and five sixes and what was his second century against them.

In reply to the chase, MI scored 181/9 but the pressure of a 200-run target eventually proved to be too much to ask for the five-time champions. With captain Rohit Sharma sent back to the MI dugout for 6 runs in the third over itself, Ishan Kishan (13 off 17) and their revamped middle order was tasked with taking on the colossal chase.

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Dewald Brevis (31 off 14) showed some promise in his brief stay on the crease especially when he scored 20 runs off Dushmant Chameera’s (48/1) first over. However, Avesh Khan (30/3) pulled back the chase with his dismissal and MI did not find their rhythm after that.

Kishan was bowled in the next over after which Tilak Varma (26 off 26) and Suryakumar Yadav (37 off 27) attempted to steady the ship. But Jason Holder (34/1) and Ravi Bishnoi (34/1) provided them with quick breakthroughs in the middle overs to derail their innings further. Pollard (25 off 14) seemed to have provided MI with a glimmer of hope but a coordinated bowling effort from LSG ensured victory.

On route to his century, Rahul scored 52 runs for the first wicket with Quinton de Kock (24 off 13 balls), 72 with Manish Pandey (38 off 29 balls), and another fast 43 runs for the fourth wicket with Deepak Hooda (15 off 8 balls).

A total of twenty fours and seven sixes were testimony to MI’s listless bowling and their bowling unit including Tymal Mills (0/54), Jaydev Unadkat (2/32) and Murugan Ashwin (1/33) could not contain LSG’s batting exploits.