Ashwani Kumar in action for Mumbai Indians in IPL 2025© BCCI
Ashwani Kumar began his IPL career on the perfect note while the 23 -year -old stimulator took the Ajinkya Rahane counter with his very first ball at his beginnings. Ashwani was included in Mumbai Indians playing Xi in place of Satyanarayana Raju and reimbursed the team’s faith by rejecting the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders. Rahane completely hidden his shot and the ball went to Tilak Varma at a deep back point. Tilak first escaped, but managed to finish the capture while Ashwani began his celebration.
It was only the beginning when the youngster continued to take the counters of Rinku Singh, Manish Pandey and Andre Russell. It was the first time that an Indian bowler took 4 counters during the IPL start.
Born in Mohali, Ashwani made the headlines with his performances in the Sher-E-Punjab T20 tournament. The quick young launcher is well known for his bowling alley in the deaths of death and was bought by the Mumbai Indians for 30 Lakh rupees during the mega auction IPL 2025. In 2024, he was part of the Punjab Kings team but did not appear in a single match for the franchise.
He made his debut for Punjab in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy in 2022 and played four games. He took three counters in an economy of 8.5 during the tournament.
He also played two first class games and four lists the games for the Punjab.
Coming to the match, the former skipper Rohit Sharma was downgraded to the substitutes when the Mumbai Indians won the draw and chose to play the first against the Kolkata Knight runners.
While Rohit was relegated to the role of the impact substitute, Mumbai brought Will Jacks and also made his debut to the corridor of the left arm Ashwani Kumar. Vignesh Puthur has also found a place in the game game and most likely give way to Rohit Sharma when MI launches his pursuit.
KKR, as expected, brought back Sunil Narine in the XI in place of Moeen Ali. Narine had withdrawn from their last match against the Royals of Rajasthan due to a disease.
(With the IANS inputs)
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