IPL 2019: 3 squads that look the weakest on paper

The Indian Premier League 2019 auction took place on December 18 at Jaipur with as many as 351 players featuring in it. At the end of the affair, the teams completed their squad with a maximum of 25 players.

Since this was not a fresh auction, the franchises had the option to retain the core players and find replacement options for the senior players which seemed an easy task at the auction. These sides have built a strong squad and look the favorites to win the twelfth edition of the IPL.

The teams which had not retained their core struggled badly to build a competent squad as they saw the players of their preference being sold to other teams. These sides had to settle for less than a perfect squad and would hope that they make the best of what they have and win matches.

In this article, we will take a look at the three teams which look the weakest on paper while going into the IPL 2019.

#3 Delhi Capitals

The Delhi Capitals once again go into the IPL having a squad of exuberant but inexperienced players. Axar Patel was their only good buy at the IPL auction 2019. Despite having a set of good Indian players, this Delhi team looks uncharacteristically weak and shows signs to falter at some point in time in the tournament.

Also, what shocked the Delhi fans more were the choices of foreign players they made. They overspent on Colin Ingram who has not played international cricket for five years and bought West Indians Keemo Paul and Sherfane Rutherford who have barely played at the highest level.

This Delhi team is packed with too many openers and hence they lack a specialist middle-order batsman. This means one of the openers will have to bat out of his position which is not ideal.

Check out the Delhi Captials squad for 2019 here.

#2 Royal Challengers Bangalore

Royal Challengers Bangalore

'Underdogs' is not usually the word one would associate with the Royal Challengers Bangalore. However, this time around, the men in the red and black go into the IPL as one of the weakest teams on the paper, uncharacteristically.

Among RCB's prominent buys at the auction were Shimron Hetmyer, Heinrich Klassen and Shivam Dubey. However, this team lacks the depth in Indian batting very badly as there is not a single experienced Indian batsman barring Virat Kohli. Hence, the RCB lack the most important ingredient required to win the IPL title, i.e., Indian batting.

While the spin-bowling department looks decent, the real concern for the RCB is how well their seamers can fare, especially after taking a beating last season. The fast-bowling has remained RCB's weakness every season and this time too they have not worked on it.

Check out their full squad here.

#1 Rajasthan Royals

Rajasthan Royals

The Rajasthan Royals is arguably the weakest team going into the IPL 2019. Known as the dark-horses of the league, Rajasthan never picked fancy players and prefer to build a modest squad.

This time around, one big mistake that the RR have done is building their team around Steve Smith, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, all of whom would be leaving halfway through the tournament. The foreign roster predominantly consists of English and Australian players which is not ideal in this edition.

This Indian core too looks like lacking penetration and experience. The franchise has not officially announced the captain but it seems that Ajinkya Rahane will pick up from where he left off last season since Steve Smith might be unavailable for the last leg of the tournament.

Check out the full squad here.