In what promises to be a cracker of a match, Mumbai Indians are set to take on Northern Knights in the last of the qualifying stage matches of the Oppo CLT20 2014.

The New Zealand side, Northern Knights have so far won both their qualifying matches convincingly, defeating Lahore Lions in the last match by a huge margin of 72 runs, which also gives them the advantage of a superior net run rate of +2.684.

Whereas the defending champions, Mumbai Indians are yet to find a proper foothold in the gam, winning the last game against Southern Express only because of a good batting show by their batsmen, improving their net run rate to +0.498 as they reached the target with 22 balls to spare. Fielding and bowling are problem areas for Mumbai Indians, as in the game against Southern Express, the opposition reached 161 playing the entire quota of 20 overs, due to some mediocre fielding by the MI squad in the form of 3 dropped catches in the outfield.

In a post match press conference, Kieron Pollard, the acting captain of the Mumbai side in place of an injured Rohit Sharma, praised the opening batsmen for their brilliant performance but was critical of his team's fielding and bowling and mentioned the dropped catches and that they had not executed their plans with the ball.

All of the 4 teams in the qualifiers of the Oppo CLT20; Mumbai Indians, Southern Express, Northern Knights and Lahore Lions have a chance of qualifying for the main tournament; with Northern Knights almost certain to make it while Southern Express being the least likely to advance.

In the fifth qualifying stage match where Southern Express meet Lahore Lions, the former will look to open their account with a solid win in order to improve their net run rate. In the scenario that they win, they would be hoping for a Mumbai Indians loss, so as to stay in the running for the main tournament. If Lahore Lions win, and Mumbai Indians also win in the following match, then Southern Express is automatically out and it will boil down to which team out of the remaining 3 has better run rate. And if both Mumbai Indians and Southern Express lose, then the other two teams will advance to the latter stages of the tournament by way of higher points.