Mumbai Indians have been familiar with bumpy starts to an IPL season. With a solitary win from their first five games in 2026, they were up against the Gujarat Titans on Monday, who had a perfect 4-0 record over them in Ahmedabad. In their previous outing here, MI had suffered their @L0$ ever while defending 200-plus, courtesy of a Shreyas Iyer masterpiece, which ended their 2025 campaign.
Kagiso Rabada's early exploits reduced them to 46/3 in the powerplay, but Tilak Varma's late belligerence propelled them to 199/5, nearly doubling their score from where it was at the second timeout break (103/4 from 14 overs). A tougher challenge awaited the visitors, for they'd now be up against the most dynamic top-order in the IPL since 2025. Not to mention MI had the worst numbers for seamers in the first six overs in the tournament. Until Monday.
@B0$
And so, desperate times called for desperate measures. For just the seventh time in 151 IPL outings, Jasprit Bumrah took the first over for MI. The previous six had come long back: twice in 2014, thrice in 2018 and once in 2022. Overall, it was just the 16th time he did that in 276 T20s. It had an instant impact: Bumrah's 115th delivery of IPL 2026 got him into the wickets column, a mistimed slice from Sai Sudharsan, sans footwork, heading to covers. For the first time in 66 matches, GT lost a wicket off the first ball of their innings.
MI now had two favourable matchups to play with from either end. Heading into the contest the Jos Buttler versus Bumrah matchup in T20s read: 79 off 88, four dismissals, SR: 89.77. For Shubman Gill against Hardik Pandya, it was 19 off 23, four dismissals, SR: 82.6. Hardik had the familiarity of the conditions, especially in the IPL, having played the second fiddle to Mohammed Shami in GT's impressive run across 2022 and 2023. 60% of his overs for GT in Ahmedabad had come in the Powerplay.
Since the start of 2022, 15 of Buttler's 21 dismissals in Overs 1-6 had come against the right-arm quicks. His numbers against the ball seaming or swinging in (from any length) against them read 21 off 42, five dismissals (SR: 50). Hardik's first ball, an outswinger in the slot, was greeted with a glorious extra cover drive. Having struggled to find the middle of the bat during his 16-ball stay at the crease, the MI skipper found the perfect spot with the ball on his second attempt: a length ball swinging into Buttler's pads to trap him leg-before. As suggestive from the numbers above, it's a ploy that has worked against the right-hander in the past, most prominently by Bhuvneshwar Kumar, among others.
Ashwani Kumar then removed Gill, and for the first time across their two seasons of union, GT's famed top-three were dismissed within the PP. They had already stumbled from a position of strength @L1$ and needless to say, this was an even taller ask. The 99-run win has now skyrocketed MI's net run-rate from -1.076 to +0.067.
MI's tactics on Monday were reminiscent of the 2013 final - the game that capped off their first major success. Defending a sub-150 total, Rohit Sharma opted to start with Lasith Malinga, the speedster having done that only once in 16 previous outings that season. Promptly, Malinga castled Orange Cap holder Michael Hussey with a perfect leg-stump yorker, and bounced out Suresh Raina the very next ball (the two had scored 86* & 82* respectively in the Qualifier 1 vs MI). Mitchell Johnson did his bit from the other end to set it up for a first title win.
Two years later, they lifted their second title despite starting their campaign with four straight defeats. In fact, they had one win from the first six games then, worse than how it reads currently. A starting XI comprising four members from India's recent T20 World Cup winning team and the skipper of the runners-up side, certainly has enough pedigree to dominate any team on a given day. Whether this victory serves as a launchpad, remains to be seen.
