IPL 2021 - MI vs RCB: The Jinx Continues as Mumbai Indians Lose Their 9th IPL Season Opener in a Row

Five-time champions Mumbai Indians just can’t get it right when it comes to starts. With their 9th straight loss in season openers, Mumbai Indians have started yet another IPL campaign with an L to their name with a narrow two-wicket loss at the hands of Royal Challengers Bangalore at Chennai in the 1st match of IPL 2021 on Friday. MI had their chances and one stage looked to break the jinx of losing their season opener for the ninth time a row, before AB de Villiers stepped in and took the game away from Rohit Sharma’s team, only for the tail to drag their team home.

However, as skipper Rohit Sharma put it during the post-match interaction with the broadcasters, winning championships is more important and it was during these nine years that they lost their first match of the campaign that they have also won all their five titles – that too under Rohit.

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“That’s the most important thing I guess (to win championships), not the first game,” he said at the post-match presentation. “I thought it was a great effort.. great fight till the end. I thought we were 20 runs short with the kind of start we got. We made some mistakes in the first game, bound to happen.”

Rohit said the losses in the first matches could possibly be explained by the time taken to hit high intensity. “In hindsight, you can say it takes time to get intensity. But there are fresh faces. Lots of players were playing international cricket and we have not had time to get to know each other very well,” he said.

IPL 2021: Winning Championships Most Important, Not Winning First Match – Rohit Sharma

Tag them as slow starters but they get the job done in the long run for sure, and clearly, Rohit Sharma is not perturbed by this opening night blues. Still, it’s one of those unique streaks that will surely make their way into the quicky trivia and as a quiz question. It is interesting to note that their losing streak for Mumbai started in 2013, at the hands of RCB where Mumbai were pipped by a narrow margin of 2 runs. That season they went on to win their first title.

In 2014, they lost to KKR and went on to lose to CSK in the eliminator that year. In 2015 also they were handed a defeat by KKR but went on to win the title. In 2016 they lost to Rising Pune Supergiants and failed to make the playoffs that year. In 2017 they bounced back to win the title, after losing to RPS once again. In 2018 they succumbed to CSK and finished fifth. In 2019 they won the title after losing to Delhi Capitals and in 2020 they lost to CSK before claiming the title for the fifth time.

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