Mumbai: Five-time Indian Premier League (IPL) champions Mumbai Indians on Saturday have appointed former first-class cricketer Zubin Bharucha as their Director of Performance across the franchise’s global ecosystem.
Prior to his new role with the Mumbai franchise, Bharucha served as the Director of High Performance at Rajasthan Royals, a position he held from November 2022 until his departure after IPL 2025.
“Zubin Bharucha joins Mumbai Indians as Director of Performance and will work closely with the existing multi-disciplinary leadership group across all performance disciplines within the MI ecosystem.
“Zubin will join the current support staff within MI’s highly integrated ecosystem and build on Mumbai Indians’ established approach to delivering sustained excellence in player development,” said the franchise in its statement.
As a right-handed batter, Bharucha played for both Mumbai and Surrey in the 90s, and had 17 first-class and 11 List A appearances, before getting into coaching. His long association with the Rajasthan Royals dates back to the inaugural season of the IPL in 2008, where he served as the Team Director until 2015.
He later worked as the Technical Director for Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals) from 2016 to 2017 before returning to RR as their Director of Cricket Operations from 2018 till he moved into being their Director of High Performance.
At RR, Bharucha has been instrumental in shaping the careers of several Indian team stars like Sanju Samson (including being his personal mentor), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel, and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi at the high performance centre in Talegaon.
Regarding his role at MI, a source told IANS that Bharucha’s scope will be very wide, as the franchise starts to execute a revamp in the set-up after not getting into playoffs in IPL 2026.
“Bharucha’s focus will be on further sharpening of MI’s scouting process and enhancing round-the-year player development programs across both men’s and women’s setups, including the off-season work on improving their skills. At the same time, he will be expanding and strengthening MI’s existing talent scouting network,” said the source.
(IANS)
