Mumbai Indians continues to remain efficient in auction as they strengthened the squad by adding experience and quality with limited purse.
Mumbai Indians is the most successful team in the Indian Premier League. Since their victory in the 2011 Champions League Twenty20 and IPL 2013, the team has not looked back. With five IPL titles, including last year’s victory, MI have shown a balanced performance on-field in the last decade.
Since the team formula is clearly working for MI, they didn’t need to bring any major changes to the team for IPL 2021. They already have a strong top and middle-order, along with a decent bowling attack. Prior to the auction, they released Lasith Malinga, Mitch McClenaghan, James Pattinson, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Sherfane Rutherford, Prince Balwant Rai, and Digvijay Deshmukh to accumulate Rs 15.35 crores for auction. Since they retained core of the squad, all they needed were a leg spinner and some overseas fast bowlers and all-rounders as back-up options.
As expected, the franchise bought back Coulter-Nile at a cheaper price of Rs 5 crores. To further enhance their pace options, they also got New Zealand’s Adam Milne and South Africa’s Marco Jensen for Rs 3.2 crore and Rs 20 lakhs, respectively. By acquiring Jimmy Neesham for Rs 50 lakhs, they got a back-up for Kieron Pollard. With Piyush Chawla (Rs 2.4 crores), they also fulfilled their necessity of a leg-spinner.
MI also invested in two young talents by acquiring Jammu all-rounder Yudhvir Charak and Arjun Tendulkar for base prices worth Rs 20 lakhs. Both of them were support players for Mumbai last season, so their acquisition was not entirely surprising. However, Arjun’s selection became one of the talking points of the auction. MI’s bid for Arjun was heavily criticized because it seemed like the team was showing favouritism towards Sachin Tendulkar’s son. Whether these young cricketers will get to play many matches or not remains to be. So, whatever chances they get, they will have to prove themselves to get a call-back in the squad for future editions.
Since Mumbai Indians already had their successful core squad, all they had to do was get some back-up options to cover all the bases. And they successfully managed to that. The team will probably not make many changes to the last year’s playing XI unless there are injuries or they want to try out some new combinations.
Mumbai Indians Full squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Aditya Tare, Anmolpreet Singh, Anukul Roy, Dhawal Kulkarni, Hardik Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Jasprit Bumrah, Chris Lynn, Saurabh Tiwary, Mohsin Khan, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Piyush Chawla, Adam Milne, James Neesham, Arjun Tendulkar, Marco Jansen, Yudhvir Singh, Jayant Yadav, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Quinton de Kock, Rahul Chahar, Suryakumar Yadav, Trent Boult.
MI predicted playing XI: Rohit Sharma, Quinton de Kock, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Kieron Pollard, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult, Rahul Chahar.
The defending champions will begin their IPL 2021 campaign against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Chennai on April 9.