10 superstars who have let their fans down this IPL

The IPL player auctions sometimes feel like Russian roulette; at times the buyers get a great deal, at times the buyers would have done better just shooting themselves. Big bucks often don’t translate into big runs or big wickets. At times, they translate into nothing.

Every year, there are three categories of players in the IPL – the players who emerged out of nowhere to have a positive impact on their team’s fortunes, the superstars who lived up to their billing and the star players who had a torrid time. When superstars are unable to perform, it is bad news for the teams not just because they are missing out on runs or wickets but also because their psyche is dented.

Most teams plan their strategies around the star players and when they fail, most coaches don’t have an option as they cannot afford to drop them either.

Here are 10 superstars who were a disappointment in IPL 2015.

(Note – Dinesh Karthik, in spite of doing a grave injustice to the amount he fetched at the auction, hasn’t been included in this list as he is not among the top international players in the IPL)

1. Yuvraj Singh

Yuvraj Singh

Delhi Daredevils’ big ticket buy had an interesting season. It started slow, went up for a couple of games and then went downhill. In 13 innings, he managed just 248 runs at an average of 19 and a strike-rate of 118 with two fifties. RCB made a smart move in hindsight to not pursue him.

There might yet be a comeback left in the Man of the Tournament of the 2011 World Cup. The Daredevils would hope it comes for their team next season. Yuvraj, after two good years at Kings XI Punjab, has rarely been successful at the IPL. Without him coming to the fore, JP Duminy was left with too much to do and not even Gary Kirsten could prevent DD from finishing seventh on the table.

2. Glenn Maxwell

Glenn Maxwell was as big a casualty at this year’s IPL as Yuvraj, if not bigger. What makes it a hard pill to swallow was the scintillating form he showed for KXIP just a year back. His performances had fired them to the top of the table and to the IPL Final. One year later, Maxwell has finished way down on the list of top run-scorers with 145 runs in 11 innings at an average of 13.5 and a strike-rate of 129. His highest score was 43. No surprise, then, that KXIP finished bottom of the table, quite a sharp dip in just one year.

3. Virender Sehwag

Virender Sehwag

His stocks have dropped of late but after last year’s stunning comeback in the IPL that saw him make it to the list of top 10 run-scorers, hopes were high. However, Sehwag disappointed and how! By the time, he was dropped in favour of an equally out of form Manan Vohra, Sehwag had collected just 99 runs in eight innings at an average of 12 and a strike rate of 118. A score of 47 was his highest, which means he scored 52 runs in the remaining seven innings.

4. Angelo Mathews

Sri Lanka’s own ice-cool captain, a man who is capable of turning around impossible games thanks to a calm head and a wide array of shots managed 144 runs in 10 innings at an average of 20.5. It didn’t help that he played at No.5 for Delhi Daredevils in most games. Nevertheless, that is his position for Sri Lanka too and he has been pivotal for them.

Something has not clicked for Mathews in the IPL, whether it is this season with the Daredevils or for Pune Warriors earlier. The all-rounder is a match winner on his day, capable of taking wickets with the ball and scoring crucial runs with the bat. Mathews didn’t do too badly, but he was capable of a lot more than what could be squeezed out of him this season. Fans of the franchise will hope that he can find his best form under Gary Kirsten next year.

5. Mitchell Johnson

Mitchell Johnson

9 wickets at an average of 37 and an economy of 9.4 hardly do justice to the great Australian fast bowler, who had put the fear of the devil in the best batsmen around the world over the last couple of years. Yet, watching him get clobbered by Parthiv Patel might have felt cathartic for some Englishmen who saw their team getting tormented during the 2013/14 Ashes series in Australia. Kings XI Punjab, though, saw very little of that Johnson as their campaign fell apart with their star bowler leaking runs and not managing many wickets.

6. Dale Steyn

Dale Steyn

Sunrisers Hyderabad picked two of the top fast bowlers in the world and failed to get the best out of either of them. They were confused, alternating between the two. To be fair, Trent Boult was in the middle of a good phase until Tom Moody, for unexplainable reasons, decided to give Steyn a couple of games. It is hard to build up any rhythm into your bowling when you are not playing on a regular basis and that is exactly what happened to the South African spearhead.

In the six games that he did play, Steyn picked just three wickets at an expensive average of 56.66 and leaked runs at an economy rate of 8.94 per over.

7. Steven Smith

Steven Smith

It would have been hard to envisage at the start of the season that the heir to the Australian captaincy would be in this list, given his form in the World Cup and how he tormented the Indians prior to that. However, Smith in 12 innings, managed just 293 runs, 79 of those coming in one game.

His average of 26 drops to 19 without that one innings. He was doing great as a skipper winning four in a row, until Rajasthan Royals got Shane Watson back as skipper once he recovered from his injury. Eventually, they had to revert back to Smith to rescue their campaign and just make it to the playoffs but tactically, you just cannot change the skipper of a team that is on a winning streak. His batting, strangely, rarely looked fluent and that resulted in their series of losses, leaving too big a burden on Ajinkya Rahane at the top.

8. James Faulkner

James Faulkner

Honestly speaking, Faulkner wasn’t exactly a superstar in world cricket until he became the Man of the Match at the 2015 World Cup final. But for Rajasthan Royals, the ‘finisher’ hardly finished anything. 144 runs with the bat at 18 and eight wickets at an average of 53 and an economy of 9.46 hardly does justice to what he could have done. RR’s premier all-rounder went for too many runs in too many games, probably costing them a top two finish.

9. Sunil Narine

To be fair to Narine, he wasn’t let to settle into bowling peacefully with too many question marks on his action. KKR missed out narrowly on a playoff spot, strangely picking Azhar Mahmood ahead of Brad Hogg who was bowling beautifully for their final game. But Narine was their unfortunate story of the season, picking just seven wickets in eight games at an average of 33 and an economy of 7.3. They sound decent for an upcoming spinner but not for someone who has hovered at the top of the wicket-takers list previously and is a mystery for the best of batsmen.

10. Suresh Raina

Suresh Raina

Suresh Raina has just edged his skipper MS Dhoni to make this list. That Chennai Super Kings finished top of the table in spite of two of their superstars performing at 50% and all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja hardly performing is a testimony to the balance of their side and their ability to play as a unit.

Raina fared decently, but you would expect more from him when you consider the fact that he has been the IPL’s most prolific Indian player, having appeared in every CSK game since the tournament’s inception. Raina has collected just 346 runs in 16 innings at an average of 25 and a strike-rate of 121 with two half-centuries from No.3.

With the final still to come, however, it won’t be a huge surprise if he makes amends for his tournament so far and produces a big knock against Mumbai Indians.