The tag of perennial slow starters for Mumbai Indians was never looked at as a serious flaw. After all, this is the five-time IPL Champions you are talking about. From not winning the first game of the season to winning champions, from languishing in the bottom half of the table in the initial stages to roaring back to form in the business end – Mumbai Indians have always found a way to break that initial rut and once they get going they are an absolute juggernaut of a team. Rohit Sharma, for all the pressure he might be feeling with no wins under his belt, would know that there probably is some time still to turn around the fortunes.
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For starters, his own form with the bat has been indifferent so far. In the five matches he has played he has got starts in three of them but has failed to build on it. In essence, he is getting out at the wrong time. Rohit has for long played the anchor role for the team with his opening partners taking on the onus of being the aggressors early. Ishan Kishan, MI’s costliest buy at the IPL Auction 2022 had a bright start to the campaign with an unbeaten 81 and 54, but he too has waned off in the last three games.
With Suryakumar Yadav’s absence in the first two games, MI experimented with Anmolpreet Singh at No.3 and now seemed to have settled on the 17-year-old Dewald Brevis. Tilka Varma, another youngster has put in some eye-catching performances, but he is yet to deliver the big one. That brings to focus the middle order, which despite the presence of Yadav is bit too inexperienced and in turn not much reliable. In the last game, Yadav came out to bat at No.5 despite the fact that he had made an unbeaten 68 (vs RCB) and 53 (vs KKR) in the last two games. And this is very MI are missing some key past players. The Pandya brothers.
The firepower the Pandya and Kieron Pollard provided down the order gave Yadav the freedom to go one rung up and build an innings and just go for the kill and more often than not set up the platform for the engine room. Now, SKY finds himself trying to be the engine, carbonator and whatnot for the MI middle-order. Pollard is still around, but Pollard has never been consistent in terms of contributions through the season. He is at his best when he comes under clutch situations and turns a couple of matches that ideally gave MI breathing space. This time around, Pollard too has been left with too much of a talk to overcome.
However, the fact that MI were all too close to winning at least two games – vs KKR they were undone by freak innings from Pat Cummins and DC by Axar Patel’s madness – hints that their batting is sorting itself out and they are not far away from getting their best batting line-up out to the park.
The worry and the major one for them is the bowling department Having kept most of the auction money and eventually spending it out on Ishan Kishan and Jofra Archer (who is available for next season only) MI lost out on some very good bargain buys in the process at the two-day auction. And with most teams negotiating the Jasprit Bumrah threat by just playing out his overs, MI have not been able to apply the squeeze with the ball at crucial junctures of the game. Here is a telling stat: No MI bowler features in the top ten list of wicket-takers or the top ten economical bowlers.
In effect, MI’s muddled strategy has come back to bite them and with key players not having guns season so far, problems have compounded for them. With the likes of Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Giants in the fray, the competition has increased and MI’s are not left with much of breathing space. They will have to make the most out of the squad available to them and maybe a rejig of the batting order and change in the bowling unit may help them turn around their fortunes.
We ask you to pick Mumbai Indians’ best playing XI that could help them snap their losing streak and not just get on the board, but also go ahead and compete for a playoff spot. (REMEMBER: In your XI ensure you pick only 4 foreign players). Happy Voting!
MI Squad: Mumbai Indians squad for IPL 2022: Rohit Sharma (c), Ishan Kishan (wk), Kieron Pollard, Suryakumar Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Tim David, Jaydev Unadkat, Tymal Mills, Jofra Archer (unavailable & injured), Riley Meredith , Daniel Sams, Fabian Allen, Mayank Markande, Murugan Ashwin, Basil Thampi, Anmolpreet Singh, Dewald Brevis, Tilak Varma, Aryan Juyal (wk), Arjun Tendulkar, Ramandeep Singh, Rahul Buddhi, Hrithik Shokeen, Sanjay Yadav, Arshad Khan.
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