The first thing you sense when you speak to Shams Mulani, are his true, blue Mumbaikar vibes. For someone who has waited patiently for his IPL call up despite some seriously good domestic cricket stats in the last four years, a contract with the team you’ve supported all along as a kid is a mini dream come true.

“I'm a Mumbai guy. So you want to play for the home franchise, you know, the Mumbai Indians franchise. And it is just so successful, like the most successful franchise in IPL. So a chance to play for MI is always very exciting,” he says in an exclusive chat with mumbaiindians.com.

Technically, this isn’t the first time Shams is in the Mumbai Indians camp. Through those two months of the Covid bubble in 2020, he was with the squad in the UAE as a net bowler, marooned in the team hotel. “I’ll never forget that season because it was just perfect. Like nothing went wrong. Everyone even today says you cannot bring back that season ever again. It was proper dominance. What a great team we had. Great people. We enjoyed a lot even though there was a bubble and we were restricted to the hotel. And you know those memories we talk about them even now after a couple of years and it's fun to think about what we did, how we played football late into the night,” he said.

“So it is good to bring back all those memories with the people who were there like Ishan, Surya, Rohit bhai. It feels good.”

Let’s rewind the clock. A 17-year-old Shams was in the stands at the Wankhede. And like all of us, was baptized for life with what he saw. May 25, 2014 is no ordinary date in MI history.

“I normally didn't come to watch the MI matches at the stadium. I used to watch it on my TV. But our coach got tickets for my entire family. And what we saw, it was just unbelievable. And I still get goosebumps. The crowd, the atmosphere and everything was just amazing.

“And Aditya Tare hitting that six, it's just embedded in my brain.”

Now, in 2023, a 26-year-old Shams could just have the opportunity to make some 17-year-old’s day at the Wankhede!