IPL 2018: 4 wrong choices of players that could prove costly for franchises

They say the IPL title is won not when the season kicks off, but on the day of the auction itself. The IPL auction 2018 was a cracker of an event. It saw 169 players find a franchise for the 11th edition of the IPL. Some team owners were enthusiastically bidding for most of the players while others had done their homework and were just sitting back and relaxing as they were waiting for the players they had chosen to come.

The IPL auction involves a lot of thinking on the owner's part. While most teams managed to build a rock-solid squad, there were few fundamental errors made by some teams which could prove very costly during the summer.

Here is a look at 4 instances when the teams got their permutations-combinations wrong.

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#4 Moeen Ali

This will be Moeen Ali's first season in the Indian Premier League

Moeen Ali was picked up by the Royal Challengers Bangalore during the IPL auction 2018, when the spin roster of the RCB reads Yuzvendra Chahal, Pawan Negi, Washington Sundar and Murugan Ashwin. This raises a question what made them go for Moeen Ali despite of having so many spinners in their ranks. Also, considering the RCB's mighty batting line-up, it is highly unlikely that Ali will get ample chances to explore his batting potential in the IPL.

With AB de Villiers, Brendon McCullum, Quinton de Kock already occupying three overseas slots and the last one likely to be used on a foreign seamer (Nathan Coulter-Nile/Chris Woakes/Tim Southee), it is hard to believe that Ali will get a chance in the playing XI.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore as always have heaps of big names and talent in abundance going in to the 11th edition of the IPL. Saying so, one area where they lack is experience in Indian batting barring Virat Kohli.

Maybe, they could have invested more in Indian batting at the auction. A spin-bowling all-rounder is really not the need of the hour for the Royal Challengers Bangalore and Ali may well have to spend the entire season warming the bench.

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#3 Mitchell Santner

Mitchell Santner is the fifth spinner to be picked by the CSK.

Eyebrows were raised when Mitchell Santner was picked by the Chennai Super Kings at the auction after having the services of 4 quality spinners (Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Imran Tahir and Karn Sharma) at their disposal.

It is hard to believe Santner will get a game to play in the presence of all these big names. Also, Chennai Super Kings are uncharacteristically fragile in their fast bowling resources. All in all, the pace-spin balance of this side is improper.

A genuine foreign seamer would have been the perfect piece in this puzzle, but not Santner here!

#2 Jason Roy

Jason Roy's last IPL season did not go as planned.

The Delhi Daredevils were the most enthusiastic team on the day of the auction, picking bucket-full of players and getting all bases covered.

The men in red and blue picked England opener Jason Roy after having Gautam Gambhir, Colin Munro, Prithvi Shaw, Rishab Pant and Shreyas Iyer as specialist openers. To shift Roy in the middle order may not be a wise option since he played at that position for the Gujarat Lions last season and didn't enjoy much success.

All in all, Roy does not add to the balance of the Delhi Daredevils and may have been a useful player for some other franchise.

#1 Chris Gayle

With poor form and age not on his side, Gayle is not the first choice opener in IPL anymore.

A team that boasts of Aaron Finch, Yuvraj Singh, David Miller and KL Rahul have surprisingly added another batsman to enhance their already power-packed batting line up.

It will be interesting to see how much impact Gayle will make, or as a matter of fact how many games he will get to play. At the moment, chances of seeing him in first choice XI of the Kings XI Punjab look bleak. The Kings XI have taken a big risk by buying Gayle and compromising on fast bowling. The fast bowling resources are very thin on experience, with Andrew Tye perhaps being the only experienced overseas fast bowler in the team.

Time will tell, but as of now it looks like Preity Zinta and Co. have got their math wrong.