Mumbai Indians fans seek net run rate neutrality

After witnessing a string of sluggish performances, beleaguered Mumbai Indians supporters have launched a huge online drive to demand net run rate neutrality from their team. With three losses in their first three games of IPL 8, Rohit Sharma's struggling side are currently downloading runs to their scorecard far slower than teams in other parts of India, a situation which has seen them accrue a net run rate that has dipped well into the negatives and threatened to create a "two-tier" system among franchises.

The dire situation has led to a huge social media campaign (hash-tagged #SaveTheIndians) in order to bring parity to millions of disgruntled Mumbaiites as well as prevent their side's sponsors from breaking off commercial partnerships with the Wankhede-based outfit for fear of having their own brands damaged by association.

One distraught fan in a brand new Parthiv Patel shirt explained the problem: "Even though in the dugout we've got Ricky and Sachin, two of the leading run providers in the game's history, our team are at times still freezing whenever we get the chance to increase our rate. We even had to rely on an old operating system - called "Bhajji" and at least five years past its best - to get it up to anything approaching modern-day levels in one match. It's so embarrassing, like your friends seeing you've still got Netscape Navigator installed on your PC. I mean, I guess it's understandable Bangalore with its reputation for hi-tech forward-thinking is ahead of us, but frankly being so far behind everyone else is a bit much to swallow.

"Obviously, what we'd really love is a positive net run rate, but with our bowling attack that seems a bit optimistic so we'd settle for it just being neutralised back to zero."

Mumbai supporters have even set up an online petition demanding action is taken, and IPL COO Sundar Raman said yesterday he has been inundated with emails calling for the competition to help. He did, however, express concerns that some fans may not have fully understood the concept of neutrality as it relates to cricket run rates rather than the internet. "Mumbai supporters don't seem to realise that the IPL is an open-source platform where scoring speeds depend solely on each side's players," he said speaking via Facebook Messenger on Airtel.

"It might seem that at times we enter into preferential agreements with some franchises to ensure they have a higher net run rate than others, but it's just not true."

With Mumbai due to face network bigwigs Chennai Super Kings on Friday, fears are growing their access to runs and wickets could be even further restricted. There was some reason for cheer, however, with the news the fan campaign has now reached the shores of the Caribbean, where one of the world's leading IT specialists pledged to investigate the problem.

"One of the reasons my team is so ahead of the game in limited-overs formats is that I don't ever watch the IPL," said England coach Peter Moores. "But although I'm not really sure what's meant by net run rate neutrality, if there's data involved I'd certainly like to look at it."

Pakistan wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal also waded into the debate for no apparent reason: "I don't know what the problem is about all this downloading and stuff," he said from Lahore. "Personally, I just use Dropbox."