Mumbai Indians had a largely disappointing IPL 2022 season as the five-time champions ended at the bottom of the 10-team points table.
MI suffered the worst start to any team’s IPL tournament when they lost their first 8 matches. The Rohit Sharma-led side bounced back to win 4 of their last 6 games and took some individual positives.
MI will want to shrug off the dismal IPL 2022 performance and would aim to rock back on top in IPL 2023. They have made a spate of releases, including letting go of some of the experienced Indian and international players.
Kieron Pollard has retired from the IPL too, after being confirmed of MI’s decision to release him.
Players released by Mumbai Indians (MI): Kieron Pollard (retired), Daniel Sams, Fabian Allen, Riley Meredith, Tymal Mills, Jaydev Unadkat, Mayank Markande, Murugan Ashwin, Anmolpreet Singh, Aryan Juyal, Basil Thampi, Rahul Buddhi, Sanjay Yadav
Having released as many as 13 players, MI will go into the IPL 2023 auction with a sizeable purse of INR 20.55 crore. This will allow MI to buy some renowned international players. The most successful IPL franchise with 5 IPL titles, though, have some headaches as they prepare for the IPL 2023 mini-auction.
Here are 3 main concerns for Mumbai Indians (MI) going into the IPL 2023 auction:
Get a backup for Jofra Archer
MI splurged INR 8 crore for Jofra Archer in the IPL 2022 mega-auction, despite knowing that Archer was unfit and unlikely to play in the tournament. He didn’t and is yet to make his return to high-level cricket; it has been learned that Archer will play in the SA20 in January in South Africa to mark his return after an injury layoff for close to 21 months.
Now, as we have seen with pacers not just in recent years but over the past decades is that fast bowlers remain vulnerable to getting injured again after returning from a long injury.
In the last mega-auction, MI bought the likes of Tymal Mills, Riley Meredith and Daniel Sams as overseas pacers, all of whom flattered to deceive and all three of whom are now released. So not only now MI have locked 8 crore for Archer, but they also need to get a solid backup in case Archer isn’t fit again or gets injured during the season.
MI failed to replace Hardik Pandya, and now have to spend big on overseas all-rounder
Replacing Hardik Pandya, who MI released ahead of IPL 2022 mega-auction, was always going to be tough. They put their bets on the likes of Daniel Sams, Ramandeep Singh, Fabian Allen, and Sanjay Yadav – none of whom rarely made any match-winning impact last season, and the two overseas all-rounders are been released.
This leaves MI once again to target for a better overseas all-rounder. This IPL 2023 mini-auction will include the likes of Ben Stokes, Sam Curran, Cameron Green, and Jason Holder – four top quality all-rounders – however, other franchises too will target them.
And so, knowing that MI are desperate for a seam-bowling all-rounder to balance their side – they were either a batsman short or a bowler short last season in their XIs – MI will have to spend a big chunk of their leftover purse of getting any one of these 4 all-rounders.
Need Indian pacers to support Jasprit Bumrah
Just like the lack of all-rounders in their retained squad, MI lack decent pacers barring Bumrah; they have released Unadkat and Thampi after their poor show in IPL 2022. One of their biggest drawback in last season’s failure was the lack of support for Bumrah from the other pacers in the line-up.
MI will want to get better T20 Indian pacers than what they have released when they turn up for the auction. They have their task cut out for this, but perhaps their scouts will come to the rescue as they had done in the past.
