Mumbai Indians paying price for a poor auction

Mumbai Indians had won their first four titles in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019 and there was a joke going around that they could win only in odd years. But in 2020 in the UAE September/October, Rohit Sharma and his team quashed all such doubts and won that IPL by totally dominating and just lost five games out of the 17 they played.

The next IPL was in six months’ time in India and Mumbai looked totally invincible when it started their campaign in 2021 by winning the first four games out of the five before the IPL got suspended and was moved to UAE again to be restarted in September last year. That’s where things turned around for them and they could win only two games out of the nine games to reach only 14 points and could not make it to the playoffs.

When the big auction happened this February, they went big for three players. One was Jofra Archer and bought him for 8 crores who would not be available for this year’s IPL due to his injury, then they spent 15 crores for Ishan Kishan and 8 crores for Singapore born Tim David. All the Pundits felt Mumbai would struggle this IPL due to a lack of depth in batting and bowling and it has turned out to be true.

Out of the four retained players in captain Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Kieron Pollard and Jasprit Bumrah, only Surya Kumar Yadav clicked as a batsman that too after he had to miss two games because of injury. Sharma has looked out of sorts in all games bearing a forty in his first game and Kieron Pollard highest score has been 26. Tim David in whom they invested heavily got just two chances and was not tried later on which was baffling. His replacement 18-year-old Dewald Brevis looked good and scored a sublime 49 against Punjab Kings but needs more time to prove himself.

In the bowling department, there was too much dependency on Jasprit Bumrah who most of the teams played him out and went after the other bowlers. Daniel Sams and Tymal Mills were on and off and their Indian pacers Jaydev Unadkat and Basil Thampi could not give that support to Bumrah.

Overall as a team, Mumbai Indians has struggled and opposition teams have found holes in their team and no wonder they have lost all their six games and are yet to get points on the table. This is the first time in their history that they have lost their first six games and it showed how the team management got it horribly wrong in the auction.