Mumbai Indians to organise three-week exposure trip to UK for uncapped Indians

Mumbai Indians (MI) are set to travel to the United Kingdom next month on a three-week exposure trip with their uncapped Indian players. This will give promising Indian youngsters like Tilak Varma, Kumar Kartikeya, and many others a chance to train at a state-of-art facilities in England. The tour also consists of 10 T20 matches against the top clubs, which will be beneficial for their preparation for the next season.

MI, five-time champions of the Indian Premier League, managed to win just four matches out of 14 in IPL 2022 and finished in the last position in the group stage table. But now they are looking forward to the next season and preparing themselves with an overseas exposure tour for their youngsters.

“NT Tilak Varma, Kumar Kartikeya, Ramandeep Singh, and Hrithik Shokeen are some of the players who will get exposure to playing against top T20 club sides in trying conditions. Arjun Tendulkar, who is also in UK, and South African youngster Dewald Brevis are also likely to join the touring party,” a source was quoted by NDTV.

This trip doesn’t need permission from BCCI: Source

Mumbai Indians head coach Mahela Jayawardene will be heading this team on their England tour and observe the progress of their uncapped players. Interestingly, no other IPL franchise has ever sent their youngsters on such an overseas tour before. Therefore, it is unclear about the rules and regulations regarding this. But the same source also told that the team is organising this tour for the sole purpose of the player’s development.

“This trip isn’t a commercial one where there will be tickets sold or the match will be broadcast on a particular channel or streamed on some app. Since the trip isn’t a revenue generator, we don’t need to apply for any permission from BCCI. We are only taking those players to the UK who are not associated with any national team activities or have been summoned for any of the BCCI conducted camps or playing in any league,” the source added.

Here is the probable list of players for the UK trip: NT Tilak Varma, Kumar Kartikeya, Hrithik Shokeen, Mayank Markande, Rahul Buddhi, Ramandeep Singh, Anmolpreet Singh, Basil Thampi, Murugan Ashwin, Aryan Juyal, Akash Medhwal, Arshad Khan, Arjun Tendulkar, Dewald Brevis (overseas).