NEW DELHI: Former Mumbai Indians skipper
Rohit Sharma
on Thursday became only the second player after MS Dhoni to play 250 Indian Premier League matches.
Rohit got to the landmark after featuring in MI's XI for the game against Punjab Kings in Mullanpur, Chandigarh.
Rohit, who began his IPL journey in 2008 with the now defunct Deccan Chargers, has been with MI since 2011 and took the franchise to five IPL titles.
Dhoni, who tops the list, has so far played 256 IPL matches.
Punjab's stand-in skipper Sam Curran won the toss and invited Mumbai to bat first in the 33rd match of the IPL.
In the previous 249 IPL matches Rohit has played, he has 6472 runs to his name at an average of 30.10 and a strike rate of 131.22.
Rohit has hit 2 hundreds and 42 half-centuries in his IPL career.
One of those two hundreds came in Mumbai Indians' last match against Chennai Super Kings at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday.
In MI's last game, Rohit hit an unbeaten 105 but his side fell 20 runs short as they tried to chase down 207 for victory. Mumbai finished on 186/6 even though Rohit raised his ton off 61 balls.
Earlier, MI's three-match losing streak was broken with two victories at home against the Delhi Capitals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru, but a defeat to CSK meant they have to start over again.
Mumbai and Punjab are both coming off losses in their last games and have each lost four games, thus pressure to perform will be intense on both teams.
Playing XIs
Punjab Kings - Rilee Rossouw, Prabhsimran Singh, Sam Curran(c), Jitesh Sharma(w), Liam Livingstone, Shashank Singh, Ashutosh Sharma, Harpreet Brar, Harshal Patel, Kagiso Rabada, Arshdeep Singh
Mumbai Indians - Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan(w), Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya(c), Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Mohammad Nabi, Gerald Coetzee, Shreyas Gopal, Jasprit Bumrah
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