Interview with Nita Ambani

The Mumbai Indians are back and raring to go, Co-owner Nita Ambani speaks exclusively to Tamanna Inamdar of TIMES NOW, on the team's plans for the season ahead.

Mentioned below are the detailed excerpts of Nita Ambani's exclusive chat with TIMES NOW's Tamanna Inamdar, as Nita elucidates about her passionate involvement with her team's sojourn into the second season of the IPL:

Tamanna: They had all of Mumbai cheering for them last year, and this year before the onset of the second season of the IPL, the Mumbai Indians are geared up to make their journey to the top. We have exclusively with us Nita Ambani, the team Co-owner of the Mumbai Indians. Mrs Ambani, thank you so much for speaking to TIMES NOW. I'm sure, there are great plans ahead but how has your experience been, in nurturing this team before the second season?

Nita: My knowledge of cricket before I took over the management of the IPL Mumbai Indians, was just very basic. I knew of Kapil Dev, Sachin of course and Sunil Gavaskar - the elementary knowledge of what's a four and what is a sixer. My involvement with the Mumbai franchise was in designing the jersey, making our anthem with Hrithik Roshan, and that was it. We've lost our four matches back to back and somehow I felt, that now is the time that I have to show this ownership because sports is all about winning and losing, as long as you put in your best efforts.

Nita Ambani further added that after the initial debacle of the Mumbai Indians in the first season of the IPL, she then decided to accompany the team everywhere they went for their scheduled matches.

Nita: So I said, I'm going to start travelling with my team. I went for the first match to Kolkata, after we lost our four matches, knowing that I'm going to be called the loser team. Everybody had given up on the Mumbai franchise, saying it's a loser team and everythng is wrong with it, and Sachin had not recovered from his injury. So everything that had to go wrong had gone wrong. The first time, that the Mumbai Indians tasted victory was against Shahrukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders in Kolkata.

Tamanna: I remember that.

Nita: That was our first victory, and after that, I was travelling with my team for every away match. I was always there for the home matches but I made sure, to travel with our team from then on, to the other destinations as well - that was away from the home turf. And that is how, I got passionately involved with the Mumbai Indians.