A TV date with Mumbai Indians

Last month, Netflix and Condé Nast Entertainment announced plans to produce an original series on the Mumbai Indians (MI) franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL). While it is still unclear if the eight-part series will concentrate only on the current edition or get into the history of the team and the league, here are five things fans would like to know more about from the series:

The turnaround

With three titles to their name, all after 2013, MI are the most successful IPL team. But in the first five editions, they made it to the final just once. What triggered the turnaround?

The rise of Rohit Sharma

All three IPL titles have come under Sharma’s leadership. While his international record has been inconsistent at best, Sharma has done better in the IPL. He is among the only five batsmen to score more than 4,000 runs. And last year, his team won the league stage before winning the title, a first in IPL’s history.

The stars

Several cricketers who have performed well in the IPL have gone on to play for the national team. But the rise of two players from the current MI team—Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah—has been sensational. Both seem to have secured their place in the playing XI, across formats.

The support staff

MI have cricketing legends among their support staff: Sachin Tendulkar, Mahela Jayawardene, Robin Singh, Shane Bond, Lasith Malinga. Beyond their role in the team’s success, we would like to know how they maintain dressing-room decorum, especially when you have both Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds—the two parties in the infamous Monkeygate incident—sharing the same space.

The superstitions

In his book Playing It My Way, Tendulkar talks about the fascinating behavioural patterns of IPL owners. “In one of the teams, it is always the team owners’ priest who decides when the players should leave their hotel rooms on match days. It can be at any time during the day, and on this issue there are no arguments," he writes. Superstitions in cricket have always made for fascinating stories.