MI Are The Perfect Case Study For A Successful T20 Team

What goes into building the most successful T20 team?

- Soham Sarkhel

In the last 10 seasons of the IPL, Mumbai Indians have won the title thrice, and qualified past the group stage seven times. To put it simply: No IPL team has been more successful. Add two Champions League T20 trophies and the “Greatest T20 Team of All Time” tag tends to crop up.

It wasn’t a smooth start. MI finished fifth in the inaugural season and seventh the next. The third season was a considerable step up, as they finished at the top of the points table but lost out to Chennai Super Kings in the Final. Losing in the knockouts became a recurring pattern over the next two seasons. But then Ricky Ponting arrived, raising hopes for a trophy – although past his prime, he was used to winning.

It helped that MI were focused on maintaining a core unit of players, not unlike another, already successful team. (In fact, MI and CSK are the only two IPL franchises to have retained the maximum number of players in the three major auctions – 2011, 2014 and 2018.) It’s eventually this core that improved MI’s performance in the big games. Naturally, there are a myriad of reasons behind a team’s success, but MI’s can be particularly linked to three.

INDIA’S BEST T20 CAPTAIN

Statistically, Rohit Sharma’s IPL win percentage of 60.66 in 75 games is better than that of any other captain (minimum of 30 matches). One CLT20 and three IPL titles in only five seasons as a captain is pretty much unparalleled. And it wasn’t easy.