Mumbai Indians

Mumbai Indians is a franchise cricket team representing Mumbai in the Indian Premier League. The team is one of the eight founding members of the IPL in 2008. Mumbai Indians are currently led by Sachin Tendulkar, who is also the Icon Player for the team and is coached by Baadal Bhojak. The team is owned by India's biggest conglomerate, Reliance Industries, through its 100% subsidiary IndiaWin Sports.

History

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) purchased the rights for the Mumbai franchise of Indian Premier league for a total of Rs. 441 Cr ($ 112.9 m) during the auction on 24 January 2008. In what has been described by some as "the ultimate heights of laziness in name selection" and "like they chose the name by throwing darts on a wall" the franchise was eventually named the Mumbai Indians. While this is arguably a "tour de force" in ineptitude, the name does acknowledge that people from Mumbai are largely Indian, which in the club's defence, is somewhat true. The RIL bid has made the Mumbai Indians the most expensive franchise in IPL, and hence won the right to hold the semi-finals and the final in Mumbai. The team was unveiled on the 17th of April, 2008 in Mumbai.

2008 IPL season

The season got off to a nightmarish start for the Indians, having lost their captain Sachin Tendulkar to a hamstring injury. With Harbhajan Singh taking over as captain, the team proceeded to lose their first 4 matches of the tournament. After Singh’s suspension for hitting Sreesanth, Shaun Pollock assumed the leadership duties until Tendulkar’s return on 14 May. It was during this time that the team turned their fortunes around, putting together a 6 game winning streak and an opportunity to make the semi-finals. They were unable to take advantage of this opportunity as they lost 3 of their next 4 games, with the 3 losses occurring in very close affairs. All these three games were lost in the last ball of the match.The match between MI and kings XI Punjab played on 21 May was considered to be the best of the season with Yuvraj Singh diving full length to run out the MI batsman in the last delivery of the match.The Indians finished with a record of 7 wins and 7 losses. Sanath Jayasuriya played a vital role in securing two important wins for the team.

Mumbai Indians were the most watched team on television in the first edition of the IPL tournament, totaling 239 million viewers.This is no doubt a credit to the little master Sachin Tendulkar who has a great fan following throughout the world.After posting a revenue of INR 69 crore and expenditure of INR 85 crore, the first season left the owners with net loss of INR 16 crore and were expected to break even in the 2009 season.

2009 IPL season

During the IPL's first transfer window, The Indians acquired Zaheer Khan in exchange for Robin Uthappa and Shikhar Dhawan in exchange for . Jaydev Shah was also added to the roster, while Loots Bosman, Dwayne Smith, Dominic Thornely, Ashwell Prince and Manish Pandey were released from their contracts.

Shaun Pollock decided not to return for the second season of IPL. He, however, kept an association with the franchise, taking up the role of the Team Mentor. Pravin Amre replaced Lalchand Rajput as the coach.

At the player auction on 6 February 2009, the Mumbai Indians purchased J P Duminy for $950,000, Kyle Mills for $150,000 and Mohammad Ashraful for $75,000. They also signed all rounders Graham Napier and Ryan McLaren for undisclosed fee outside of the auction.

2010 IPL season

During the IPL's first auction for the year 2010, Mumbai Indians bought Westindian All rounder Kieron Pollard for USD 750,000, after a silent tie-breaker with Chennai Super Kings, Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Kolkata Knight Riders.The team had a strong start after defending a total of 212 against the Rajasthan Royals in their first match and went on to beat Delhi Daredevils defending another 218.The team was supported by match-winning knocks from Tiwary,Rayudu and Tendulkar.However the Mumbai Indians crumbled to the Royal Challengers Bangalore for their first loss in 3 games.In their next game, Mumbai Indians restricted the Kolkata Knight Riders to a meagre 155.The Mumbai Indians chased this total with ease, as Sachin Tendulkar scored a blazing knock of 71 from 48 balls. It also won in the same fashion against Chennai Super Kings by Sachin Tendulkar, again playing a match-winning knock of 72 from 52 balls.They continued their winning streak by winning against the previous year's champions, Deccan Chargers, due to an amazing knock of 49 from just 18 balls and a spell of 3-31, by Harbhajan Singh. They also beat Kings XI Punjab by 4 wickets, courtesy of Shikhar Dhawan, Saurabh Tiwary & Rajagopal Sathish. They also defeated the Deccan Chargers by 63 runs and won their 7th game out of the 9 games played . On 11/04/2010, Mumbai Indians beat Rajasthan Royals to become the first team in IPL 2010 to qualify for semi-finals. In their 12th game they defeated Delhi Daredevils and remained the table toppers with 18 points and a run rate of +1.12. In the 13th game Mumbai Indians Defeated Royal Challengers in their Home Ground in a match that was delayed due to a small intensity blast in the stadium premises. In the final league game Mumbai Indians rested their key players. Dwayne Bravo lead the game in absence of Sachin Tendulkar and they lost the game to Kolkata Knight riders by nine wickets. With 20 points they were at the top of the points table and played their first IPL semi-final with Royal Challengers Bangalore. They crushed their opponents in the semi finals despite losing Sachin Tendulkar for a single digit score, which happens to be his first single digit score this year in all forms of the game. They lost their first IPL final to Chennai Super Kings. They also qualified for Champions League Twenty20 2010 along with Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Sachin Tendulkar had an excellent IPL 2010, amassing 618 runs with a strike rate of 132.61. He won the orange cap for the tournament, which is awarded to the highest run scorer. He played an important role in bringing out young talent to the forefront in players like Saurabh Tiwary, Ambati Rayudu and Aditya Tare. Sachin Tendulkar also won the best batsman and the best captain awards in the IPL Awards 2010.

Club Logo & Colours

The team logo has the Sudarshana Chakra with the team's name engraved in it.

The team colours was almost the same in 2008 and 2009, except for the colour shade and additional sponsors. In 2010 a new kit with golden stripes was unveiled.

Players

During the player auction in 2008, the Mumbai Indians successfully bid for 7 players, including two members of the Indian Twenty-20 World cup winning side in Harbhajan Singh and Robin Uthappa. Sanath Jayasuriya, Lasith Malinga, Luke Ronchi, Dilhara Fernando and Shaun Pollock were other cricketers who were successfully bid for by the franchise.

Outside of the player auction, the franchise also signed up Ajinkya Rahane and Abhishek Nayar (from Mumbai), Yogesh Takawale (WK-Batsman from Maharashtra) and Pinal Shah (WK-Batsman from Baroda).Saurabh Tiwary and Manish Pandey, the members of the U-19 world-cup winning team were the random picks drafted in during the BCCI held second auction. Dominic Thornely was also signed by the Mumbai Indians for a sum of $2905000. Andre Nel the South African fast bowler was signed on in the place of Dwayne Bravo who left the tournament early.

In the 2009 player auction,the Mumbai Indians signed up South African sensation, Jean Paul Duminy for $950,000.He was the third most expensive pick after Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff (both signed up for $1.55m by Bangalore Royal Challengers and Chennai Super Kings respectively). In addition they also bought New Zealander, Kyle Mills.

In the IPL 2010 Mumbai Indians bought West Indian all-rounder Kieron Pollard For $750,000 and he impressed everyone with his performances at Big Bash and Champions League.

Transfers

In the 2008-2009 transfer window, Mumbai Indians conducted two straight swap deals, with no money exchanged. Ashish Nehra was swapped with Shikhar Dhawan of Delhi Daredevils[8] and on the last day of the transfer window, Robin Uthappa was swapped with Zaheer Khan of Royal Challengers Bangalore[9], who plays for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy. In a three-way trade, Jaydev Shah of the Rajasthan Royals - captain of the Saurashtra Ranji squad that made it to the semi-finals and son of former cricket board secretary Niranjan Shah - will move to the Mumbai Indians. Batsman Gaurav Dhiman of the Mumbai Indians will turn out for the Bangalore Royal Challengers and lanky Rajasthan Ranji Trophy team pacer Pankaj Singh, of the Rajasthan Royals, will don the colours of the Bangalore Royal Challengers in the coming IPL season.

Stadiums

The Mumbai Indians have two home grounds, the Wankhede Stadium and the Dr. D.Y. Patil Sports Academy. For the IPL's 2009 season, the Mumbai Indians had agreed to use the Cricket Club of India's Brabourne Stadium while the Wankhede Stadium underwent renovation. Brabourne Stadium would have hosted 5 of the 7 home matches, if not for the IPL being moved to South Africa.