Mumbai Indians' IPL 2024 Disaster: Captaincy Change Backfires as MI Finishes Last:

With merely four wins in fourteen games, the five-time champions Mumbai Indians (MI) made a sharp fall from grace finishing last on the points Table for the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) season. Prior to the start of the season, Rohit Sharma was unceremoniously relieved of his duties as the captain and was succeeded by Hardik Pandya. This decision had some house of cards effects from within the franchise and as it turns out led to a major rift with respect to unity, performance and overall chemistry of the team.

It is believed that many senior players were frustrated by the apparent calm the MI franchise had and thus were sabotaged by the peace loving atmosphere post the sudden captaincy switch. This event led to a shocking deterioration of performance of the players on the field.

While there was considerable inconsistency in most areas of the team’s performance, the biggest factor had to be the new captain Hardik Pandya’s abominable performance. Pandya scored 216 runs with a measly high score of just 46 at an average of 18. His strike rate was slightly above 143. In the second half of the season, however, Pandya managed to showcase some promise as a bowler and picked up 11 wickets, but with a terrible economy rate of almost 11.

During the first phase of the tournament, Rohit Sharma was phenomenal, he was MI’s highest scorer with 417 runs, which included a hundred and his runs came at a strike rate of 150. During the final phase of the tournament, he only crossed the 20 runs mark once in the last seven matches which his form significantly declined in the second half.

Rohit Sharma was the second-most prolific bowler in the IPL 2024 league stage with 20 wickets. His economy of 6.48 would have been remarkable, but the unit as a whole lacked depth and support which made total defense ineffectual.

Varma, during the midinnings, scored 416 runs with an average of 41.6 and attained a remarkable in 150. Suryakumar Yadav scored 345 runs with a 100 Suryakumar, although he missed the first few matches. Ishan Kishan was inconsistent in form, scoring 320 runs at an average just above 22, with Kishan being Ishan.

After their audacious and highly debated change in the captaincy, Mumbai got super lucky which was great. This actually makes it the second time in the past three years that they have completed bottom of the tabel.