Mumbai Indians' turnaround decoded: death overs tamed, middle overs mastered

However, there are three players who have played nearly all league games and are, at best, in their second IPL season. MI invested in opener and wicketkeeper Ryan Rickelton, England allrounder Will Jacks, and used the RTM option for Naman Dhir.

Rickelton, who was bought at the auction for his base price of INR 1 crore, has been MI's second-highest scorer so far after Suryakumar Yadav. MI needed a wicketkeeper after letting go of Ishan Kishan and they showed their preference for a left-hand opening partner for Rohit Sharma. They did that by picking Rickelton, whom they had seen closely with MI Cape Town in SA20 for two seasons already - he was the top-scorer in the 2024 edition and then fourth on the runs charts in their title-winning run in 2025.

When Rohit was struggling for runs early on, Rickelton, meanwhile, scored quickly. By the time Rohit got his first big score, in MI's eighth game, Rickelton had 180 runs at a strike rate of 150, and he has since more than doubled that count to 388, sharing the team's lowest balls-per-boundary ratio (4) with a few others. His form gave Rohit the comfort of time to regain his rhythm and often set the platform for the remaining batters.

One of those batters was Dhir. His stock had risen from INR 20 lakh to INR 5.25 crore this year because of his big shots, especially the towering sixes he hits down the ground. It's no surprise that his strike rate of over 180 is the best for an MI batter this season, despite batting at No. 3, No. 6 and No. 7, excelling in each of those positions.

He took down the international trio of Mitchell Starc, Mukesh Kumar and Mohit Sharma in the death overs in Delhi; his 25* off 11 lifted MI to a match-winning 215 against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and his last two knocks saw him strike two fours and four sixes in a combined 20 balls to emerge as a reliable finisher. For a batter at No. 7 or below, Dhir has the second-most runs for an MI batter in a season. Another 19 runs and he will top that list. Apart from his batting, Dhir has also been a handy fielder in the deep, pouching the second-most catches.

The third cog in the trio is Jacks, who has played 13 of their 14 matches, but has headed home like Rickelton. With centuries to his name across the SA20, BPL and IPL in the span of just three months in early 2024, it would have been fair to assume MI selected him for his top-order bashing.

But the surprise element - testimony to his six-for on Test debut - came in the form of his offbreaks, used astutely by MI against left-hand batters. Jacks often bowled soon after the powerplay, and has bowled two-thirds of his deliveries to them so far. The match-up peaked against LSG when he took out Nicholas Pooran and Rishabh Pant, both caught in his first three balls. Earlier in April, he had bagged a similar feat opposite SRH, when he had Kishan stumped for two and Travis Head caught for 28. On both occasions the oppositions were kept to 160-odd and MI won comfortably, with Jacks the Player of the Match.

All his six wickets came against left-handers with a far better economy rate (7.50 compared to 10.71 against right-hand batters), but such has been his efficacy that he has the second-best economy rate and the best average for a spinner against them this season.

If there were any doubts about his T20 form coming into the IPL because of the low scores against England at the start of the year - which included two ducks - Suryakumar put them all to bed by marrying two factors, of which one often comes at the cost of another for top-order batters: consistency and a high strike-rate.

Even before MI began to pick up the pieces after the initial defeats, Suryakumar had started churning out the runs in the middle overs. The crescendo of MI registering one win after another along with Suryakumar's form went hand in hand. He first put on steady scores of 25-plus every time and then hit the high notes in the second half of the league stage with match-winning performances during the crunch games, both home and away. If he swept his way to 54 against LSG and peppered the boundaries on flat tracks, Suryakumar also chaperoned the batting on challenging pitches in the last two outings, first at home with an unbeaten 73 against Delhi Capitals (DC), and then with a 57 opposite Punjab Kings (PBKS) in Jaipur.

His T20 mastery is not a surprise anymore but the fact that he averages 71.11 this season proves that no bowling attack has found answers for his 360-degree play. His 14 straight 25-plus scores are a world record now, his tally of 640 is the highest for an MI batter in an IPL season. He is also the first non-opening batter in IPL history to have scored over 600 in a season two times (2023 and 2025). If he scores another 48 runs, he will hold the record for the most runs by a non-opener in a season, going past AB de Villiers' record of 687 from 2016.

If MI play on more tricky surfaces in the playoffs or face a crisis situation, Suryakumar will hold the key for them, especially in the middle overs where he has scored 75% of his runs and he is, not surprisingly, the leading scorer in that phase by a big margin. He has scored 41.17% of MI's runs in overs 7 to 16, which is also the biggest contribution by a single batter in the middle overs towards his team.

A lot has come together for MI in the last couple of months to put the string of losses behind them, boss different phases of the game, and rely on different match-winners to make it to the last four. The next challenge will be to continue this streak even in the absence of those who have left for national duty.