Mumbai Indians begin their IPL 2026 campaign on March 29 against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Wankhede. Pre-season training opened on March 16 under head coach Mahela Jayawardene, with one goal in sight: a sixth title. A focused auction, headlined by the return of Quinton de Kock at his base price of \u20b91 crore, has left the MI squad looking sharper than it has in years.<\/p>\n
Hardik Pandya enters his third season as captain with a settled hierarchy around him. Jayawardene’s return has sharpened the focus on maximising Pandya alongside the senior core of Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, and Jasprit Bumrah.<\/p>\n
After being used primarily as an Impact Player substitute in IPL 2025 amid fitness concerns, Rohit Sharma is set for a full-time return. Head coach Mahela Jayawardene has indicated he wants the veteran more active on the field to ensure his leadership is present throughout the 40 overs.<\/p>\n
Beyond the return of Quinton de Kock, MI has bolstered its depth with trades for Shardul Thakur and Sherfane Rutherford. Deepak Chahar further diversifies a potent pace battery, providing lethal swing to complement Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mumbai Indians begin their IPL 2026 campaign on March 29 against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Wankhede. Pre-season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,57578,27710,17774,6770,35046,172775,172776,103046,32190,36824,18856,9317,101,38346,77690,56,54,55,153118],"class_list":["post-487848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-deepak-chahar","tag-hardik-pandya","tag-ipl-2026","tag-jasprit-bumrah","tag-kolkata-knight-riders","tag-mahela-jayawardene","tag-mayank-markande","tag-mitchell-santner","tag-mumbai-indians","tag-quinton-de-kock","tag-rohit-sharma","tag-shardul-thakur","tag-sports","tag-suryakumar-yadav","tag-tilak-varma","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wankhede-stadium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}