To add the freshness of youth, and the balance of a seam-bowling all-rounder in their eleven, Mumbai Indians splurged INR 17.5 crore on Cameron Green at the IPL 2023 auction.
It seems that their bottom-table finish – their worst-ever finish in an IPL season – in IPL 2022 is too far away, and with a strong, revamped squad, they are ready to remind everyone, in the IPL 2023, why they have the most IPL trophies – 5 – in their cabinet.
Mumbai Indians players bought in IPL 2023: Cameron Green (INR 17.5 crore), Jhye Richardson (INR 1.5 crore), Piyush Chawla (INR 50 lakh), Duan Jansen (INR 20 lakh), Vishnu Vinod (INR 20 lakh), Shams Mulani (INR 20 lakh), Nehal Wadhera (INR 20 lakh), Raghav Goyal (INR 20 lakh).
Here are the 3 biggest match-winners for Mumbai Indians in the IPL 2023:
Suryakumar Yadav
There perhaps hasn’t been a better dream year for a batsman in T20Is than Suryakumar Yadav had in 2022. In 31 T20Is, SKY smashed 1164 runs – the most by an Indian batsman ever in a calendar year in T20Is. It was his average of 46 and strike rate of 186 that made his year look jaw-dropping. He was scoring big runs, and doing it with a belligerent rate. Both of his T20I centuries came outside Asia.
With MI as well, in IPL 2022, while most batters around him had a dismal time, Suryakumar averaged 43 and struck at 145.
Once again, should he continue his surreal form, SKY will be a key man in the batting department for the Mumbai Indians.
Jofra Archer
When facing Mumbai Indians, there was a theme that was largely followed by the opposition batting team in IPL 2022: play out Jasprit Bumrah safely, and then attack the rest of the bowlers. So while Bumrah took 15 wickets and had an economy of 7.18, other bowlers were carted around by the batters.
MI entered the auction to get some strong support for Bumrah, they got Richardson and Behrendorff. But they have a world-class arsenal already, bought in the 2022 auction but missed the tournament: Jofra Archer.
Archer was the Player of the Tournament in the IPL 2020, even though his team, Rajasthan Royals, didn’t reach the playoffs. That’s how staggering a tournament he had then: 20 wickets, an economy of 6.56.
England’s 2019 World Cup hero, Archer, has missed the past 22 months of action due to multiple injuries. But he is fit and ready to return to top-level action in January. Archer will have two months’ time to prove his fitness and get back to his best bowling-wise before the IPL.
Once fit and firing, Archer, combined with Bumrah, will become a devastating force for MI in IPL 2023.
Tim David
Mumbai Indians made a grave mistake – which surely they were left rueing by the end of the season – when they dropped Tim David after just two matches at the start of the season. He was recalled in the line-up, after MI had already been eliminated from the playoff race and Pollard was in poor form.
On his return, David’s scores read: 20* (9), 44* (21), 13(9), 16*(7),46(18), 34(11). That was also enough for Australia to include Tim David in their T20I XI at the T20 World Cup.
The burly, muscular, Singapore-born power-hitter is one of the most ferocious finishers going around in T20 circuit with franchises chasing him to play in their team. The 26-year-old already has an experience of over 140 T20 matches, and had made his name a consistent finisher before even getting into the IPL and in the Australian team.
With Pollard now retired, Tim David will take over the mantle of the finisher at MI. And could touch Pollard’s legacy at MI by the end of this decade.
Mumbai Indians Full squad:
Openers: Rohit Sharma
Middle order: Suryakumar Yadav, Tim David, Dewald Brevis, Tilak Varma
Wk: Ishan Kishan, Tristan Stubbs, Vishnu Vinod
All-rounders: Cameron Green, Arjun Tendulkar, Ramandeep Singh, Shams Mulani, Nehal Wadhera, Hrithik Shokeen, Arshad Khan, Duan Jansen
Spinners: Piyush Chawla, Kumar Kartikeya, Raghav Goyal
Fast bowlers: Jasprit Bumrah, Jofra Archer, Jhye Richardson, Jason Behrendorff, Akash Madhwal
