Team : Mumbai Indians

Mumbai Indians

Start of IPL has brought more excitement in filed of T20 cricket. There are cricket teams in IPL representing a city or region. Mumbai Indians is one of such teams. The biggest brand in India, Reliance Industries Limited, bought rights for Mumbai franchise of Indian Premier League costing them around $111.9 million. Reliance purchased rights in an auction held on 24th January, 2008.

As from statistics you can see that RIL has made MI the most expensive team and thus got rights to hold semi-finals and final in Mumbai on the home grounds of MI viz. Wankhede Stadium and Dr. D.Y.Patil sports academy. Both the grounds are located in Mumbai. The team was unveiled on 17th April, 2008 in Mumbai.
Though the team was built with strong players, first season of IPL was nightmare for MI. they lost their captain and world’s one of the greatest player, Sachin Tendulkar due to hamstring injury. Charge was then taken by Harbhajan Singh who failed to gift a win to his teammates in first 4 matches. When Singh was suspended over a controversy, Shaun Pollock took charges of the team.

Under the captaincy of Pollock, Mumbai Indians claimed 6 consecutive wins raising their semi-final chances. Unfortunately, they lost their next 3 games with very close margins. Sanath jayasuriya played important role in team victory. First season ended for MI with a net loss of INR 16 crore.

2009 IPL season was not different for Mumbai Indians as they again failed to make place in semi-finals. During transfer window 2008-09, Zaheer Khan and Sheekhar Dhawan joined Mumbai Indians. They bought J P Duminy, Mohammad Ashraful and other players in the squad in player auction. There were changes in management also as Pravin Amre took charge as coach. This year West-Indian all rounder, Kieron Pollard has become part of squad. Thus this year owner of this blue team is keeping high expectations from the team.