4 lesser known facts involving Mumbai Indians
Mumbai Indians is one of the more famous and arguably the best team in the history of IPL. From the moment Sachin Tendulkar was announced as the ‘Icon Player’ of Mumbai Indians, they became one among the widely followed T20 teams. Besides that, their style of signing ‘Big Name’ players during every auction increases their fan base year by year. This is one of the many reasons why some have labelled them as the ‘Real Madrid’ of cricket.
Mumbai is the only team in the history of the tournament to win the IPL trophy thrice. In addition to this, they also won the now-defunct Champions League T20 twice. With a newly formed team, Mumbai would like to extend their legacy & dominance in the upcoming seasons. Mumbai being the defending champions will once again enter into this year's IPL edition as heavy favourites.
Even though they are being widely followed, there are few facts involving them which rarely got the attention of everyone. Let's look at four such lesser-known facts involving Mumbai Indians.
#1 Foreign Players Rule
It's a well-known rule that each IPL team is allowed to field a maximum of four foreign players in their playing XI. But during the now-defunct Champions League T20 in 2011, Mumbai Indians were allowed to field five foreign players.
Since a majority of their Indian’s players were injured and ruled out of the tournament, MI successfully filed a request to permit them to field five foreign players in their starting XI. Without the exception, they would have been unable to construct a team of 11. So far this was the first and only scenario when an IPL team was allowed to field five foreign players. This exception was proved to be vital as MI emerged as the winners of that CLT20 edition.