Nita Ambani, owner of the Mumbai Indians (MI), on Tuesday spoke about the team after the franchise acquired a lot of young players at the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction in Jeddah on Monday.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“At MI, we take a lot of pride and satisfaction in scouting and nurturing many young talents who have gone on to play for the Indian team,” she stressed and thanked the ‘MI Paltan’ for their passionate support with a message in Marathi.
Nita Ambani also opened up on management’s mindset behind building the team and said that they wanted to build a team around the strong retained core at the mega auction.
“Mega auction mhanje, navin team, navin shurvat, pan toch Mumbai Indians cha utsah (Mega auction means new team, new start but the same Mumbai Indians enthusiasm). I am happy to welcome some new faces and to have some old ones back with us – Trent Boult, Naman Dhir, Allah Ghazanfar, Ryan Rickelton, Deepak Chahar, Robin Minz, Karn Sharma, Will Jacks, Mitchell Santner, Reece Topley, Ashwani Kumar, Raj Angad Bawa, Shrijith Krishnan, Satyanarayana Raju, Bevon-John Jacobs, Arjun Tendulkar, Lizaad Williams and Vignesh Puthur. We have retained a strong core with Hardik, Jasprit, Rohit, Surya and Tilak and the opportunity at the auction was to see how we can build a team around them,” she said as quoted by a Mumbai Indians press release.
Further, Nita Ambani spoke about nurturing young talent in the country.
“At MI, we take a lot of pride and satisfaction in scouting and nurturing many young talents who have gone on to play for the Indian team. From Jasprit, Hardik, Tilak, Ramandeep Singh, and now we have a pool of upcoming youngsters and an opportunity to develop the next set of talent – Naman Dhir, Robin Minz, Ashwani Kumar, Raj Angad Bawa and Shrijith Krishnan. I am very excited to welcome them to the Mumbai Indians #OneFamily and we want to continue this tradition of developing young players for Indian cricket,” she added.
In the end, Nita Ambani thanked the Mumbai Indians fans (MI Paltan) for their support so far in the cash-rich league and called them the biggest strength for the franchise.
“Paltan, he apli team aahe. Mumbai chi team aahe. Tumcha support MI chi sarvat mothi takad aahe. Paltan, ekatra khelu ani jinku aplya One Family sathi (Paltan, this is our team, Mumbai’s team. Your support is the biggest strength of Mumbai Indians. Paltan, Let’s see our #OneFamily play and win together),” she said as the press release concluded.
Earlier, the five-time IPL champions retained their ‘Fab Four’ by shelling out a hefty amount. Along with Hardik Pandya, Rohit Sharma, Tilak Varma, and Suryakumar Yadav, Bumrah was among the five players who were retained by the Mumbai-based franchise ahead of IPL 2025.
MI finished at the bottom in the last season, where they could only manage 4 wins and 10 losses under the captaincy of a returning star, Hardik Pandya.
MI Squad for IPL 2025: Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rohit Sharma, Tilak Varma, Trent Boult (Rs. 12.50 crores), Naman Dhir (Rs. 5.25 crores), Robin Minz (Rs. 65 lakhs), Karn Sharma (Rs. 50 lakhs), Ryan Rickelton (Rs. 1 crores), Deepak Chahar (Rs. 9.25 crores), Allah Ghazanfar (Rs. 4.80 crores), Will Jacks (Rs. 5.25 crores), Ashwani Kumar (Rs. 30 lakhs), Mitchell Santner (Rs. 2 crores), Reece Topley (Rs. 75 lakhs), Krishnan Shrijith (Rs. 30 lakhs), Raj Angad Bawa (Rs. 30 lakhs), Satyanarayana Raju (Rs. 30 lakhs), Bevon Jacobs (Rs. 30 lakhs), Arjun Tendulkar (Rs. 30 lakhs), Lizaad Williams (Rs. 75 lakhs), Vignesh Puthur (Rs. 30 lakhs).-ANI