IPL 2025: Mumbai Indians keen to have Rashid Khan

Gujarat Titans are interested in retaining Rashid Khan ahead of the IPL 2025 mega-auction, however, Mumbai Indians are equally keen to sign the star spinner and are understood to have held meetings with him regarding the same.

Rashid has been one of the biggest match-winners in the last three IPL seasons, picking up 56 wickets in 45 matches. He played an instrumental role in 2022, when Gujarat defeated Rajasthan to win their maiden title, and then in 2023, when he finished as the joint second-leading wicket-taker in Titans' runners-up finish.

The Titans are unlikely to let go of an asset like Rashid and are expected to retain him in one of the top brackets alongside skipper Shubman Gill. However, given the fact that the Afghanistan international plays for multiple MI-owned franchises across the globe and shares a good relationship with the owners, there is a slight chance that he could consider shifting base to Mumbai.

That said, there is no trade window that Mumbai can use like they did in case of Hardik Pandya last year. Therefore, the only way they can bring in Rashid is convincing him to come to the auction and then go after him. But even then, bagging him in the auction is not a guarantee as nearly every franchise would be willing to break the bank for him.

Moreover, as things stand, Mumbai are also eyeing to retain Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya, Tilak Varma, Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav, which would leave them with a significantly lower purse as they would require to spend INR 75 crore at the very least to retain the abovementioned players. 

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One of the possibilities is to sign Rashid ahead of IPL 2026 through the trade window. Mumbai tried to onboard the spinner ahead of IPL 2023 but could not. But one can’t rule out the option of using it again in the future.