The IPL 2023 may be done and dusted, and while it’s still fresh in our heads, let’s look back at our campaign with our analytical hats on. The multiple moments of awe, the stocks for the future, the moments of frustration, everything, in some sort of a season-ending report.

Strengths

Batting is one area where MI were undeniably one of the biggest entertainers. Whether it was scoring quick-fire centuries, scoring 200-plus totals or chasing them down, our batters showed no fear in aiming for the impossible. No wonder we’ve broken down some age-old records this time around.

Like every season, our younger players keep rewriting a new destiny of their own in the IPL. Taking this chance, the likes of Tilak Varma and Nehal Wadhera ticked all the boxes with their exquisite performances at the crease.

Akash Madhwal and Piyush Chawla changed the face of MI’s bowling in IPL 2023. The Engineer Madhwal was a proper revelation, bowling clinically at the death, with a 5/5 spell in the Eliminator to finish with 14 wickets in eight games. PC - returning after a year’s absence - rolled back the years to finish as the leading wicket-taker for us in the 2023 edition. He said he was playing for his son, and boy, wasn’t he just superb!

It’s become a habit now, and it’s just not surprising, but let’s just state it. Aapla Dada Surya was batting on a pitch of his own. He owned this IPL, smashing 605 runs averaging 43.21 in 16 matches with a century and five fifties along the way.

Cameron Green and Tim David officially took the baton over from Kieron Pollard, with both of them sealing games in the middle-order. And of course, our skipper Rohit Sharma’s tactical brilliance was for everyone to see, especially towards the business end of the tournament, guiding the younger bowlers in demanding situations.

Weaknesses

Pace bowling was a key area where we needed more finesse, but we managed to pull through. The absence of Jasprit Bumrah and Jofra Archer (halfway through the season) was a visible void in the bowling setup, but Jason Behrendorff and Akash Madhwal stepped up admirably to combine for 28 wickets.

While we scored six 200-plus scores in IPL 2023 - a record in one season, we saw Gujarat and Punjab (twice each), Rajasthan and Hyderabad hit 200 past us. We chased down three of those scores, but we really missed Boom’s experience at the death, a habit we’ve spoilt ourselves with of just trusting him to close out the innings.

Opportunities

To a large extent, the story of the IPL this year was the way MI’s younger/uncapped talent just took the world by storm. Only four out of the 26 players didn’t get a game in Mumbai Indians’ MI-ssion IPL 2023, but considering the timeline of fixtures, there is a window to test bench strength in mid-season games.

Akash Madhwal, Arshad Khan, Arjun Tendulkar,  Nehal Wadhera, Raghav Goyal, Duan Jansen, Vishnu Vinod, having gotten the exposure of cricket at the highest level, can now take this back to the domestic circuit, build on it, and knock some doors down.

Threats

In one simple word: INJURIES. It isn’t easy on the players who are constantly on the road, switching from one format to the next. This is where we need to keep our antennas up, and maybe just pray, or lock our players up in safety vaults. Okay, seriously, that’s the only threat we face. All our bases are covered, and next year, with our players further hardened in domestic cricket, we’re only going to take things up a notch.