Mumbai Indians have finally put an end to one of the IPL’s oddest long-running quirks. By beating Kolkata Knight Riders by 6 wickets at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday, they registered their first opening-match win of an IPL season since April 4, 2012, when they had beaten Chennai Super Kings by eight wickets in Chennai after bowling them out for 112. It is a simple result on the points table. But in the larger story of the franchise, it feels like the closing of an old, improbable circle.
That is because this was never a streak attached to failure in the usual sense. Mumbai did not spend these years drifting in irrelevance. Quite the opposite. Since that last opening-night win in 2012, they built one of the great IPL empires, winning five titles and defining an era of the league. The weirdness of the opener record was that it survived all of that success. Mumbai Indians became a giant, but every new season still seemed to begin with the same stumble. This win against KKR finally removes that annual talking point and lets the franchise start with something it has rarely had in recent times: clean momentum.
The last time this happened, Rohit Sharma was still trying to become Rohit Sharma
The strongest cricketing marker of how far back this streak goes is Rohit Sharma himself.
Today, Rohit belongs to the settled aristocracy of Indian cricket. But when Mumbai last won a season opener, he was still trying to secure his place rather than define the team around him. In 2012, he was part of India’s limited-overs plans, but not beyond debate.
Rohit Sharma was not out of India’s plans, but he was not yet the fixed, all-format certainty he would later become. He was still in that vulnerable stage where every low score reopened the question. In Test cricket, the footing was even shakier. Later in 2012, he was left out of India’s Test squad, and he had not yet established himself in red-ball cricket either. So when Mumbai last won an opener, Rohit Sharma was still a gifted India player in transition, not yet the finished figure Indian cricket now admires.
India and Pakistan still had bilateral cricket left in them
Notably, when the Mumbai Indians last opened a season with a win, India and Pakistan still had bilateral cricket left in their relationship. Pakistan’s white-ball tour of India in December 2012 and January 2013 would go on to become the last bilateral series between the sides. That means Mumbai’s opening-night drought survived an entire era in which one of cricket’s biggest bilateral contests vanished from the calendar.
India’s trophy cabinet looked very different then
The gap also opens up when you look at Indian cricket more broadly.
When Mumbai last won a season opener in April 2012, India’s men had only three senior ICC titles: the 1983 ODI World Cup, the 2002 Champions Trophy that they shared with Sri Lanka, and the 2007 T20 World Cup. The 2011 ODI World Cup had, of course, just been won a year earlier, taking the tally to four by then, but the larger point still holds when you frame the period as an evolving rather than completed legacy. Since that phase, India have gone on to add major ICC silverware again, including the 2013 Champions Trophy, the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup, and the 2025 Champions Trophy. In other words, this Mumbai opener drought stretched across a major expansion of India’s men’s ICC résumé.
There is a women’s-cricket angle too, and it may be even more striking. When Mumbai last won an opener, India Women had never won a World Cup. That remained true for years afterwards, through near-misses and heartbreaks, until they finally broke through by beating South Africa to win the 2025 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, their first World Cup title. So this MI streak lasted from a time when Indian women’s cricket was still waiting for its defining global triumph to a time when that wait has now ended.
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The wider sporting world was still unfinished
Step outside cricket and the time gap feels even larger.
On April 4, 2012, Roger Federer was still the leading man in the men’s Grand Slam race. He would later finish with 20 majors, but the men’s record now belongs to Novak Djokovic with 24. So when Mumbai last won a season opener, Federer still stood at the top of one of sport’s most famous statistical ladders. Today, that summit has changed hands.
LeBron James had not yet won an NBA championship. His first title would come later in 2012. Since then, he has won four NBA titles, become the league’s all-time leading scorer, and become the first player in NBA history to cross 40,000 regular-season points.
Lionel Messi had not won the FIFA World Cup. In 2012, that missing piece still framed every debate about his place among football’s greatest players. Argentina’s triumph in Qatar 2022 changed that permanently. So this Mumbai drought lasted from a time when the biggest question around Messi was still unresolved to a time when it no longer exists.
Cristiano Ronaldo had not yet won a major international title with Portugal. That breakthrough only came with UEFA Euro 2016, Portugal's first major title. When MI last won an opener, even Ronaldo’s international story still had its greatest blank space.
Manchester City had not yet won a Premier League title. Their breakthrough came only at the end of the 2011-12 season, on the famous final day that would become one of modern English football’s defining title moments. So when Mumbai last began an IPL season with a win, City were still chasing the first title of the era that would later turn into dominance.
Usain Bolt had not yet completed his London 2012 sprint double. Later that year, he became the first man to win the Olympic 100m-200m double at consecutive Games. Again, the point is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is a scale. This Mumbai opener drought has stretched on long enough for even the most iconic moments of that Olympic year to still be in the future when it began.
This was more than a hoodoo
That is what Mumbai have ended here. Not merely a strange statistical hex, and not merely a first-game problem, but a streak that had survived captaincy changes, title wins, generational shifts, and the remaking of sport itself. It dated back to a time when Rohit Sharma was still fighting for stability in India’s XI, India and Pakistan still had bilateral cricket in them, India Women had not won a World Cup, LeBron had no ring, Messi had no World Cup, Ronaldo had no major international title, Federer still ruled the Slam ladder, and Manchester City had not yet become Manchester City as we understand them now.
For the immediate table, this victory over KKR means two points. For the franchise’s longer history, it means something cleaner and more satisfying. The Mumbai Indians have finally started a season like the giant they have long been. And in doing so, they have ended a curse that belonged to another era of sport.