Two wins from seven and no net run rate to speak of: Mumbai Indians' playoff hopes look gone
There are sticky IPL seasons, and then there is whatever Mumbai Indians are going through in 2026. Losing by 103 runs at home to Chennai Super Kings on Thursday night was, by any reasonable measure, the low point. But it also felt like an inevitable one. This has been a slow-motion collapse rather than a sudden shock, and the numbers now point squarely at a missed playoff spot.
The math has got brutal
Mumbai sit eighth with two wins from seven matches. Four points. A net run rate of minus 0.736, which is among the worst in the league. They have seven games left. To finish on 16 points, the usual benchmark for top four, they would need to win six of them.
Even five wins probably will not be enough, because their net run rate will almost certainly leave them behind any team on equal points. That is what being bowled out for 104 chasing 208, with only Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav putting up anything close to resistance, does to your numbers.
You can construct a path back if you try hard. Win five, hope for chaos elsewhere, mop up bottom sides with big margins to repair the NRR. In practice, Mumbai have not looked like the side that can string three wins together, let alone five.
This is not just a cricket problem
It would be easier to put this on bad luck if the pattern was not so familiar. Mumbai have lost three in a row at the Wankhede for the first time in the franchise's history, on a ground they used to treat as theirs. Hardik Pandya's side is a world away from the Mumbai that reached the top two almost by default a few years ago.
Some of this is selection. Quinton de Kock opening with Danish Malewar rather than Rohit Sharma, Sherfane Rutherford in the middle order falling to a golden duck on Thursday, the ongoing uncertainty around roles either side of Tilak Varma. Some of it is form. Suryakumar Yadav was once the batter Mumbai built around, and he has been reduced to starts rather than scores. The XI looks unsettled because it is unsettled.
What a salvage job would look like
There is still something to play for. Mumbai are not going to catch the top four realistically, but they can finish the season with dignity, decide what their 2027 core looks like, and make sure Ashwani Kumar's four-for in Ahmedabad does not turn out to be the only lasting memory of this campaign.
That probably means working out where Suryakumar bats, giving Will Jacks a proper look now that he has joined the squad, and seeing whether Tilak Varma's 101 against Gujarat was the start of something rather than a one-off. In a season as unsalvageable as this one is starting to look, the value is in the data you collect, not the points you pick up.
None of which will make Thursday night any easier to watch again. Akeal Hosein's four-for, Sanju Samson's unbeaten 101 from 54 balls, the crowd in blue going silent inside the first five overs of the chase. That is how the season feels right now. It has been slipping all month. Now it just looks gone.
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