IPL 2018: Mumbai Indians Squad For The Upcoming Season

The much-anticipated auction for the upcoming Indian Premier League finally concluded on Sunday in Bangalore, and as expected it was full of surprises. While Jaydev Unadkat becoming the most expensive Indian player in this year’s auction should not come as a surprise considering his sensational performance last season, the likes of Joe Root, Eoin Morgan and many other notable names going unsold certainly left a lot of people surprised. In fact, Chris Gayle, the most decorated batsman in the history of T20 cricket, was looking destined to go unsold before being bought at his base price of INR 2 crore by Kings XI Punjab towards the fag end of the auction.

Perhaps the uncertainty is the beauty of this auction which keeps the fans glued to their television sets for the two intriguing days. Now coming to the major figures of this year’s auction, out of 578 players, only 169 were sold. 113 of the sold players are Indians while the remaining 56 are overseas. Unadkat became the most expensive Indian player after being bought by Rajasthan Royals for a whopping amount of INR 11.5 crore while Ben Stokes once again became the most expensive overseas player after being purchased by the same franchise for INR 12.5 crore.

Now that the auction is done and dusted we are taking a look at the squad of defending champions Mumbai Indians. The reigning IPL champions had retained Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya and went on to strengthen their team by signing some top overseas players like Kieron Pollard, Mustafizur Rahman, Evin Lewis and Ben Cutting.

In Suryakumar Yadav, Aditya Tare and Siddesh Lad, they got some very talented local players while the likes of Saurabh Tiwary, JP Duminy and Jason Behrendorff will further boost the squad as the team will be looking to defend its title.

So here is the full squad:

Rohit Sharma
Jasprit Bumrah
Hardik Pandya
Kieron Pollard
Mustafizur Rahman
Pat Cummins
Suryakumar Yadav
Krunal Pandya
Ishan Kishan
Rahul Chahar
Evin Lewis
Saurabh Tiwary
Ben Cutting
Pradip Sangwan
JP Duminy
Jason Behrendoff
Tajinder Singh Dhillon
Sharad Lumba
Siddesh Lad
Aditya Tare
Mayank Markande
Akila Dhananjaya
Anukul Roy
Mohsin Khan
Nidheesh

An avid cricket lover, I just love this game more than anything. Writing about cricket keeps me closer to the game.