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U Mumba were among the founding members of the Pro Kabaddi League when the league was established in 2014. In the five seasons that have been held since, the Mumbai based team have been crowned champions once and finished as runners-up twice.
Their solitary title came in 2015 when they beat Bengaluru Bulls in the Final. However, the latest edition of the Pro Kabaddi League was quite disappointing for U Mumba, as they finished fourth in the group stage, missing the cut for the championship playoffs.
The U Mumba hierarchy must have looked at the 2018 auction as a chance to rework and revitalize the team. They came into the auction with a clear goal to rebuild the team and ended up spending the second most amount of money after Telugu Titans.
In fact, going into the auction, U Mumba decided not to retain anybody and bring with them a full purse.
A huge chunk of that purse was devoted to Fazel Atrachali, as U Mumba picked up the Iranian defender for a record bid of Rs. 100 Lakhs. With the winning bid, Atrachali became the highest paid foreigner in the PKL since its inception.
U Mumba also picked up Dharmaraj Cheralathan for Rs. 46 Lakhs, while winning the bid for Abhishek Singh at Rs. 42.8 Lakhs.
The team from Mumbai had a clear goal in mind, to rebuild from scratch, and they have done so. The big money signing of Fazel Atrachali also proved that U Mumba are looking to get back to the top. However, their strategy of focusing the funds on some key players meant that they had to take in many new players as New Young Players (NYP).
Below is a list of the key transfers along with all the players picked up by the U Mumba in the 2018 PKL auction.
Key Transfers
Fazel Atrachali
Dharmaraj Cheralathan
Abhishek Singh
Here is the full squad of U Mumba:
Raiders:
Abhishek Singh - ₹42.8 lakh
Siddharth Sirish Desai - ₹36 lakh
Abolfazl Maghsodlou - ₹21.75 lakh
Vinodh Kumar - ₹22.5 lakh
Darshan Kadian - ₹12 lakh
Rohit Baliyan - ₹12 lakh
R Sriram - ₹12 lakh
Arjun Deshwal - ₹8 lakh
Gaurav Kumar [NYP] - ₹6.6 lakh
Defenders:
Fazel Atrachali - ₹100 lakh
Dharmaraj Cheralathan - ₹46 lakh
Rajguru - ₹12 lakh
Rohit Rana - ₹12 lakh
Hadi Tajik - ₹11 lakh
Surinder Singh [NYP] - ₹6.6 lakhAdinath Gavali - ₹8 lakh
All-rounders:
E Subhash [NYP] - ₹6.6 lakh
Shiv Om [NYP] - ₹6.6 lakh
Ananth Kumar [NYP] - ₹6.6 lakh
Mohit Baliyan [NYP] - ₹6.6 lakh
