10 superstars who have let their fans down this IPL

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.