Delhi: Mumbai Indians after losing by 2 wickets to Royal Challengers Bangalore on Sunday, May 10(Mumbai Indians) The journey from IPL 2026 is over. Mumbai Indians is out of the race for playoffs. This is the fourth time in the last six seasons that MI has failed to cross the league stage hurdle.

In this match played in Raipur, after batting first, Mumbai scored 167 runs at the loss of 7 wickets. On behalf of the team, Tilak Verma played the highest innings of 57 runs in 42 balls. In reply, RCB won on the last ball of the match and with this MI was out of IPL 2026.

There have been many big reasons behind Mumbai Indians not reaching the playoffs this season. In this article, we are mentioning the three main reasons due to which the team could not make it to the playoffs.

3 big reasons for Mumbai Indians being out of IPL 2026

1.Flop of great batsmen

Mumbai Indians had retained almost all their key players before the mini auction, but the big names did not perform as per expectations. The result was that the Mumbai team was seen lagging behind in almost every match. Captain Hardik Pandya has disappointed the most. In the 8 matches played so far, he has scored only 146 runs and his strike rate during this period was also nothing special. Even in bowling, he gave away a lot of runs and could take only four wickets.

The poor form of dashing batsman Suryakumar Yadav did not leave him even in the IPL. He has scored only 195 runs in 11 innings at a modest average of 17.72. Tilak Verma scored a century and a half-century, but he also did not show the consistency that the team needed. At the same time, Rohit Sharma not being able to play some matches due to injury also proved to be very harmful for Mumbai Indians.

2. Didn’t show strength in bowling

Like the batting, Mumbai Indians had entered IPL 2026 with a very strong bowling attack on paper, but their bowling also completely failed to perform as per the name and status of the team. The team suffered the most loss due to the poor form of its leading fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah. Being the lead pacer, Bumrah has not been able to show the same edge as was expected this season and till now he has only three wickets in his name in 11 matches. He could not even take a wicket in the first 5 matches. Also, he has given away runs at an economy of 8.51, which proved to be a big blow for Mumbai.

Apart from Bumrah, experienced bowlers like Deepak Chahar (3 wickets), Trent Boult (2 wickets) and Shardul Thakur also dashed the expectations. The most useful bowler for the team was Allah Ghazanfar, who scored 13 successes.

3. Lack of unity seen in the team

Looking beyond the statistics, Mumbai Indians never looked like a united team in IPL 2026. Barring the match against RCB, Mumbai has lost all the other matches by a huge margin, which clearly indicates the lack of motivation in the team. Mumbai has lost two matches by 6 wickets, one by 8 wickets and one by 7 wickets. Not only this, they also had to face crushing defeats of 99 runs and 103 runs in two consecutive matches.

Is it just a coincidence that India’s four star players of T20 World Cup 2026 (Bumrah, Hardik, Surya and Tilak) are part of this team? Leaving aside Tilak Verma to some extent, the other three stalwarts looked completely ‘out of form’ this season. The body language of MI players never looked positive throughout the tournament. In such a situation, it is not surprising that the team has once again been out of the league stage.