Mumbai Indians

The group stage of the tenth edition of the Indian Premier League is about to draw to a close, but the Mumbai Indians are back where we belong, at the top of the tree! Yes, for the first time since IPL 2010, we are at the top of the table.

To be on top of the tree requires a contribution across the board and not just from a select few consistent performers. In this regard, this season has witnessed an incredibly even performance by members of our squad. We’ve won 10 matches, the second-most won by a side when franchises have played 14 matches in a single IPL season. It’s also the same mark we managed the last time we topped the table, in 2010.

If you total up all the runs we’ve scored across the 14 matches so far, we have managed 2407 runs in 272.1 overs, the most by any side this season. Where does this rank across the editions of the IPL where teams played 14 matches apiece? Well, let’s find out: –

We missed out by a whisker registering our highest aggregate in a 14-match season! Nevertheless, let’s look at the 10 matches we’ve won. We won 5 out of 7 matches at home and an identical 5 out of 7 matches away from home. The hallmark of the most successful sides is an ability to not perform at home, but away from home as well. We can safely say that we’ve passed that test with flying colours as no other team has managed to win more than 4 matches way from home: –

* Indicates this team has one more away match to play ** Indicates this team had one away match washed out.

Speaking of successful sides, our last victory of the league stage brought up a century of outright victories in all Twenty20 (T20) tournaments. It’s a phenomenal achievement, given that the Mumbai Indians came into being later than other teams that contest other T20 leagues and tournaments. Let’s look at the most victorious sides in the short history of T20s: –

The league stage was a veritable cornucopia of matches, ranging from the pulsating thriller at Rajkot (in which we won the match after a Super Over), to the come-from-behind victory against the Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, after Samuel Badree reduced Mumbai to 7/4 in the pursuit of 143 for victory. Then there was the match at the Wankhede, where our batsmen almost chased down a mammoth 231 set by the Kings XI Punjab. But for sheer domination from start to end, it’s hard to go past out victory against the Delhi Daredevils at the Feroz Shah Kotla. The margin of victory was an enormous 146 runs, the largest victory by run in IPL history: –

In the match against Delhi at the Kotla, Lendl Simmons was adjudicated the Man of the Match. In all our victories this season, one of our lads has taken home the Man of the Match award. What’s amazing to note is the sheer number of individuals to have received the accolade: 9!

When it comes to power-hitting, Mumbai Indians have managed to outshine their opponents by a significant distance.

*Indicates this team has one more match to play

Thus, given the above table, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find a few MI players in the leaderboard for maximums this season. To put this into context, as of the end of the KKR vs MI match, 16 players have hit 15 or more sixes in IPL 2017: Four of them (a full 25%) are MI players: –

⦁ Kieron Pollard (21 sixes)
⦁ Hardik Pandya (18 sixes)
⦁ Nitish Rana (17 sixes)
⦁ Jos Buttler (15 sixes)

Hardik Pandya has been at the forefront of this. Given his role to be the finisher of the innings, his ball-striking abilities see him perched currently second on the list of players with the best balls-per-six ratio (cutoff is 100 balls faced in IPL 2017): –

Thus, with the Indian Premier League about to reach its climax next Sunday, Mumbai have clearly been the entertainers of the league. After finishing the league stage at the top of the league stage, we play the first Qualifier at our home-ground. We have a good record at that venue and our big hitters will be itching to smash a few more into the crowd. The focus right now will be to get a direct entry into the final by beating the second-placed team in the Qualifier.