“It has been a season of what-ifs and overall disappointing for all of us.”
That one line from Kieron Pollard on Sunday perhaps summed up Mumbai Indians’ IPL 2026 campaign better than the points table could. A season that began with hopes of building on last year’s playoff finish slowly spiralled into confusion, inconsistency and collective underperformance. While captain Hardik Pandya inevitably became the face of the criticism, Mumbai’s collapse ran far deeper than leadership alone. For one of the rarest times in franchise history, almost nothing aligned — not Rohit Sharma’s form, not Suryakumar Yadav’s explosiveness, not Tilak Varma’s consistency, and not even Jasprit Bumrah’s brilliance could rescue them from a season that never truly took flight.
On paper, Mumbai looked one of the strongest squads in the competition. The experts could not agree more. Most, if not all, had the five-time champions in their predicted playoffs line-up. And why not? Last year, billed as part of Hardik’s redemption arc, Mumbai finished third after reaching Qualifier 2. They retained their core, released only one player, and watched from a distance as Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders rebuilt their squads at the auction table.
The little adjustment Mumbai sought was made before the auction, when they added Sherfane Rutherford, Shardul Thakur and Mayank Markande via cash trades, and spent less than INR 3 crore in the mini-auction, where Quinton de Kock was the only major buy. Yet, they eventually found themselves in the same half as Kolkata and Chennai, with a season that turned out even worse.
They started with promise, beating Kolkata at home in the opener, before stumbling to four straight losses. But that was typical Mumbai, wasn’t it? The perennial slow starters. Only this time, it wasn’t. Those defeats had already exposed deep cracks in their bowling attack and tactical setup. Mumbai repeatedly lost control of games through poor middle-over management, reactive bowling changes and an inability to seize momentum even in winning positions.
For a brief moment, Mumbai appeared to regain their footing, with Tilak Varma scoring a sensational hundred to help crush the Gujarat Titans by 99 runs. Or so they thought. Hardik called it “the game” that could change their season. Instead, what followed only deepened the uncertainty around the side. Defeats in their next three matches almost sealed their fate, something even a win against the Lucknow Super Giants could not undo. The confirmation eventually arrived with a defeat against defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru in Raipur on May 10.
Mumbai won just one of their remaining three matches to finish ninth in the points table, with four wins and 10 losses — the same as bottom-placed Lucknow, but with a marginally superior net run rate.
Mumbai failed to create any meaningful impact in the powerplay, either with the bat or the ball. In a season where scoring rates against the new ball consistently crossed 10 runs per over, Mumbai managed just 8.8. Rohit Sharma’s repeated failures at the top — he fell cheaply in five matches — forced constant chopping and changing in combinations, with only Ryan Rickelton emerging as a partial positive.
But Mumbai’s batting problems stretched far beyond the powerplay. Suryakumar Yadav, the MVP of last season, managed only 270 runs in 13 innings at an average of 20.76. Tilak Varma fared relatively better, scoring 359 runs at a strike rate of 145.93 with three fifty-plus scores, but two of those came after Mumbai were already eliminated, and apart from that one century, he had little to show when it mattered most. Hardik too looked completely out of rhythm — not just in closing games, but through the middle overs as well. His bowling impact dipped significantly, while several captaincy calls also came under scrutiny.
The tactical confusion was visible repeatedly throughout the season. Hardik often delayed using Bumrah in pressure phases, shuffled bowlers without clear match-up logic, and struggled to control games once momentum slipped away. Mumbai looked like a side constantly reacting instead of dictating.
With the ball, Trent Boult and Deepak Chahar had formed the backbone of Mumbai’s powerplay dominance last season. This year, however, Mumbai conceded at 10.83 runs per over in the powerplay — better only than Sunrisers Hyderabad. Boult went wicketless in the phase while conceding more than 13 per over, similar to Hardik, who managed just one powerplay wicket. Chahar picked up six wickets at an economy rate of 9.12. In fact, AM Ghazanfar emerged as Mumbai’s only genuine wicket-taking threat early on, but his seven wickets came at the expensive rate of nearly 11 per over.
One of the biggest factors behind Mumbai’s collapse was Bumrah. For years, he had been Mumbai’s all-phase unicorn — the bowler who controlled the powerplay, middle overs and death alike. But he never truly arrived this season. Although scoring against him remained difficult, Bumrah struggled to make decisive breakthroughs consistently across phases, something Mumbai had built their bowling identity around for years.
Another major factor that underlined their struggles was the reversal in fortunes at the Wankhede Stadium. The fortress had fallen. In 2025, Mumbai had a 5-2 record at home. This season, that flipped dramatically to 2-5, with their only wins coming against Kolkata and Lucknow.
Hardik faced the brunt of the criticism after yet another early exit — a second under his leadership after the 10th-place finish in 2024 — but Mumbai’s season of chaos was ultimately the story of their golden core unravelling together. For the first time in years, Mumbai’s superstars stopped covering for each other’s flaws — and the empire collapsed with them.
