Hello, welcome to today’s IPL 2019 preview I hope you are enjoying each preview and let me know your thoughts do you agree with me or is there something I missed? Also go check out the other previews, I am reviewing every team taking part in this years competition. Today we are looking at the Mumbai Indians. The joint most times winner with Chennai Super Kings with 3 wins however last season they didn’t make it to the playoffs.

Batting

First I check the batting averages and as with all metrcis this is compared to the batting averages of all the players who have a previous history of playing in the IPL for the other teams. On this metric it doesnt look too good for Mumbai with no batsmen able to achieve a world class average of over 40.

Reviewing the strike rates of Mumbai batsmen overall I would say theirs no batsmen in the world class exceptional bracket. Most of the batsmen are in the average 120 – 140 range with one batsmen just nudging over 140. I would expect the team that wins the competition to have more attacking batsmen then Mumbai do.

Next to area to highlight is the non boundary strike rate. This is the batsmen strike rate when all 4 and 6 are taken out. Therefore a high non boundary strike rate means the batsmen is often rotating the strike whereas a low non boundary strike rate could mean the batsmen doesn’t often run between the wickets they wait to hit 6’s. For Mumbai it looks very much like they have batsmen in the latter camp. There batsmen don’t tend to rotate the strike they block up an end and wait to score 6’s. This is OK if you have a mixture but to have all one type could cause issues.

Bowling

Moving onto reviewing the bowling attack in the same way we have reviewed the batting line up. First up looking at the wicket strike rate how many balls on average the bowler bowls between taking a wicket. This looks to be pretty good for Mumbai with a number of bowlers able to take wickets at less then every 20 balls. This should mean this is a lethal bowling attack which will regularly reduce opposing scoring by taking wickets.

There’s no point taking lots of wickets if you concede loads of runs as well. So checking the average run rates for the bowlers for Mumbai they have a few poor bowlers conceding well over 8 runs per over but also some well less than 8, almost breaking the top echelons of average run rates.

Finally reviewing the extra rate for all the bowlers there is a wide spread. The higher the number the better as extras mean more balls bowled and more runs conceded. Mumbai’s bowlers don’t do well on this measure. They seem to have a lot of bowlers hat concede extras (wide’s and no balls) at less then 1 every 25 balls bowled.

Overall they have some weaknesses in the batting line up but also some strong bowlers which could even itself out. Let me know your thoughts on Mumbai squad. How do you think they will do?