Slowly but surely MI have become the team no one wants to face

Before a ball had been bowled this season, there was scepticism about how the Mumbai Indians (MI) would fare in IPL 2023. Last time out, they finished rock bottom, and with Jasprit Bumrah being ruled out altogether, coupled with a massive injury cloud over Jofra Archer, many feared the worst for the five-time champions.

The first half of IPL 2023 followed that narrative too, with MI not really imposing themselves in games. There was the odd display where their powerful batting unit came to the fore but those seemed glorious aberrations, if anything.

Now, as the home stretch of the IPL dawns, they have morphed into a side many thought they could not become in 2023. Of course, there are still chinks in this current armour and they are perhaps not as strong as some of their teams have been historically.

But they have found a way to win, and when the business end of the IPL comes about, that is what separates the also-rans from champion outfits.

MI find themselves in a rich vein of form

Mumbai Indians have won four of their last five matches, with their only defeat coming away to arch-rivals Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Prior to Friday, all of those victories had come about when they had batted second.

When they had to bat first, like it was at Chepauk against CSK, they only managed 139 and lost convincingly. In fact, before the contest against the Gujarat Titans (GT), they had won batting first just once - against Sunrisers Hyderabad.

With murmurs around their inability to defend totals increasing, Suryakumar Yadav decided to take matters into his own hands. Not only did he produce one of the all-time great IPL knocks, but he also ensured his team scored well above par, accounting for the incessant dew and their inexperienced bowling attack.

This is now the second time Suryakumar has made the impossible seem routine (just three days apart). Earlier in the season, he was not quite at his best. But he is now, and that is not good news for opposition bowlers.

Ishan Kishan is also threatening to burst into a run-scoring spree. A week ago, he plundered a half-century against the Punjab Kings at Mohali, and while he has not registered a fifty since his cameos against GT and the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) have been invaluable.

Nehal Wadhera, who had not played a professional T20 game before IPL 2023, is batting as if he has been batting in the MI middle order all his life. The same could be said about N Tilak Varma too, who will be a welcome addition whenever he recovers from injury. Similarly, Cameron Green and Tim David have shown glimpses this season of how destructive they can be.

The biggest thing for them, though, is that they have stitched together this run without many sizeable contributions from their skipper. Rohit Sharma produced a few drool-worthy strokes against GT but has fallen well short of the standards he has set for himself over the years.

Despite his barren run, MI have dominated with the bat, and while that is, to an extent, a damning assessment for Rohit himself, it is a warning sign for the rest of the IPL pack. If Rohit were to find his feet, Mumbai could become an irresistible batting force.

While their batting has understandably hogged headlines, their bowling attack also deserves praise. Piyush Chawla, in terms of wickets, has produced his best IPL season ever. Akash Madhwal, on the other hand, has looked the part in his debut campaign. Jason Behrendorff, too, has been a menace in the powerplay lately.

There are question marks over how suitable Chirs Jordan and Kumar Kartikeya will be in different conditions but if they keep batting the way they are doing, they will only need to do the bare minimum to ensure their batting work is not undone entirely.

And that is what makes Mumbai such a dangerous outfit. No team in the IPL (probably apart from CSK) has more know-how of winning titles than Mumbai. Almost all of their marquee players have now come to the party at some stage. Based on the calibre of players, they only need two or three to have a good day anyway to ensure victory.

Thus, slowly but surely, MI have now become a team that nobody wants to face. If batting first against them, it will be very tough to decipher what a good score would be. When batting second, sides might already be chasing the game because the five-time winners would have put up so many runs on the board.

This is, in many ways, what Mumbai have been historically but what they were not expected to be this season. And that makes them even more fearsome, for they have now morphed into this monster that no one really was prepared for.

Those teams are the hardest to stop. As things stand, no side seems harder to stop than the five-time champions.