The Indian Premier League (IPL) reached a massive milestone during match number 42 of IPL 2023. The match which is being played between Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals happens to be the 1000th IPL fixture.
It has taken 15 years for the tournament to reach the milestone. The inaugural edition of the competition was staged in 2008 with the first-ever match played between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Kolkata Knight Riders at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on April 18.
Since then the league has not only become the biggest cricket league in the world but across sports, it is counted as among the world's best. The match also coincides with what is Rohit Sharma's 150th match as the skipper of the Mumbai Indians. It is also Rohit's birthday as the Team India captain turns 36 on April 30.
Before the match, both the captains of the team who were playing the 1000th IPL game, Rohit Sharma of MI and Sanju Samson of RR were presented with a special memento. In addition, in a special celebration, volunteers were spotted carrying flags and video footage from previous editions of the league were shown on giant screen.
It is also worth highlighting that this is the tenth season for Rohit as the captain of MI. He had been appointed as the skipper after Ricky Ponting had stepped down midway through the 2013 edition of the tournament.
As far as the match is concerned, RR won the toss and chose to bat first in this game. Both the sides find themselves in contrasting positios on the points table at this stage of the game. While RR are at the second place on the points table with 5 wins from 8 matches, MI are second last with 3 wins from 7 games. This will be a crucial game especially for MI who need to make a turnaround right now if they want to be in serious contention for a place in the Playoff.