Mumbai Indians review for IPL 2022: The empire collapses, feeling after-effects of a bad mega auction

Approaching a transition phase after having to reshuffle their core, Mumbai Indians (MI) were always vulnerably placed for the IPL 2022. 

As it turned out, they did find it a road too difficult to sail through, becoming the first team to exit the playoffs race after losing a record eight matches at the start of their campaign. 

Of the remaining six, MI won four, but the pedestrian run at the start of the tournament meant they had to settle with the tag of wooden spooners. A drastic collapse for the five-time winners, the most successful IPL franchise. 

The Rohit Sharma led side would be reeling by their second consecutive league stage finish, as they now deal with a number of holes in their playing squad and look to cover them up to try and rebuild a winning juggernaut. 

What held Mumbai Indians back in IPL 2022? 

The problems were two-fold. Not only did MI struggle in the bowling department, but a number of their key batters also failed to come to the party. On the bowling front, this has to be the weakest set of individuals that MI have brought together. 

Losing their key new-ball bowler Trent Boult, their middle-overs enforcer Nathan Coulter-Nile, and their spinners Krunal Pandya and Rahul Chahar to other teams, MI had to spread the net wide in search of quality options. But the team finished the season with more questions than answers. 

Roping in Tymal Mills, Riley Meredith, and Daniel Sams to try and fill the void of strong backup seam arsenal to their ace quick Jasprit Bumrah, MI needed at least one of them to come up with the regular goods. But each proved very expensive. While Meredith and Sams conceded 8.42 and 8.80 runs an over, Mills went for a horrible 11.17 in his five games. 

It meant all the pressure came on Bumrah, who made a slow start to the tournament but eventually came into his own to produce a few stand-out spells. In what was essentially his most challenging season, Bumrah still took 15 wickets at 7.18 an over on fairly good batting pitches. 

There seems to be no quick end to MI's misery on the spin front, with neither of Murugan Ashwin (ER 7.86), Mayank Markande (8.14), Hrithik Shokeen (8.46) and Kumar Kartikeya Singh (7.84) offering the level of control and leash, as well as the incisiveness, that MI would've hoped for. 

The batting was plagued by the struggles of three key players - skipper Rohit, his opening partner Ishan Kishan and the team's experienced middle-order aggressor Kieron Pollard.

Kishan, who had a better second half than the first, finished with 418 runs for the tournament. But they came at a pedestrian strike-rate of 120.11 on true batting surfaces, robbing MI of the momentum and early footing into games they needed inside the powerplay overs. 

Rohit, whose last IPL season averaging more than 30 while striking above 130 came way back in 2016, had his worse season with the bat in terms of aggregate, with only 268 runs from his 14 innings. 

The struggles of the Kishan-Rohit duo put all the pressure on MI's in-transition middle-order and it was felt the most by Pollard, a player seemingly in decline with his game. Dropped near the close of his team's campaign, Pollard made only 144 runs from his 11 innings while going at a strike-rate of 107.46, showing no rhythm and flow to his batting in the tournament. 

Any positives for Mumbai Indians to take forward? 

Suryakumar Yadav was once again his team's stand-out batter, averaging 43.28 and striking at 145.67 for his 303 runs from eight innings. But what would count as a real positive for MI is the way uncapped Indian batter Tilak Varma looked in his maiden IPL season. 

The left-hander made 397 runs at 36.09 while carrying a strike-rate of 131.02. More than his runs, however, it is the way he Varma batted under pressure against a varied set of oppositions throughout the competition that augurs well for the youngster. 

Another notable inclusion on the batting front was South Africa's teen batting prodigy Dewald Brevis, who showed his spark from time to time and produced his 161 runs with a strike-rate of 142.47. With time and experience, Brevis is expected to go from strength to strength in MI colours. 

Dropped after two games, Tim David showed on his return to the side why the MI think-tank perhaps got his handling wrong. The explosive Singapore batter played some eye-catching knocks to finish with 186 runs at a strike-rate of 216.27. He could be the one to fill Pollard's shoes in the MI set-up going forward. 

What MI need to change? 

The five-time winners need to first ask themselves a few pertinent questions. Is it time for them to put Rohit Sharma the batter under scrutiny? Has the time come to move past Pollard? And do the returns of investment made on Ishan Kishan suffice? 

If these three men are holding MI's progress back, then the cricketing merit would dictate the side to approach the next phase of transition phase without them and back their new personnel to take the side forward. These would be hard calls but ones that could perhaps benefit MI in the long run. 

Thinking long-term, MI would have their pace attack bolstered next season with a fit and fine Jofra Archer potentially combining forces with Bumrah. That would help MI to cover up four more overs out of 20, leaving them with less head-scratching to do in collecting a better support cast than they had this year, for the existing one is simply unsustainable. 

MI could well have invested in a pair of quality spinners and pacers, instead they opted to fetch their bets entirely on buying back Kishan at the mega auction, letting go the likes of R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar among others. Two of these bowlers in that attack may have meant a different story altogether.