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Sports has not always seen the best team on paper triumph. The English Football Team during the 2010 FIFA World Cup was basking in the pride of having high profile Premier League stars like Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and John Terry, but faced a shocking exit early on in the tournament. The Indian Premier League too - which ropes in the best of talent from the cricketing world - for its part has mirrored the irony of surreal upsets in more occasions than one. Each year, at least one of the franchises look the strongest on paper. However, what it had to offer on the field was neither close to what the written theory stood for nor what the credentials of the players spoke for. Here we take an opportunity to analyse the teams that were star-studded yet utterly diasppointed the fans in the by gone seven editions of the IPL.
#5 Royal Challengers Bangalore - 2014
Just imagining a team which has the names of AB De Villiers, Yuvraj Singh, Chris Gayle, Mitchell Starc and Virat Kohli will send jitters down the spine of any opponent; such is the power of the fabulous men when it comes to the shorter format of the game. IPL 2014 very clearly saw RCB as the strongest of all and UB Group owner Vijay Mallya made the highest bid to grab the 2011 World Cup hero Yuvraj Singh into the squad.
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RCB proved every theory wrong in a lowly and contemptible fashion as they succumbed to 9 defeats out of the 14 they played. With that awful performance they could finish only in the penultimate position on the table, thus failing to qualify for the semis. RCB though hasn’t won an IPL yet, might very well consider the 2014 season as their lowest despite possessing the big wigs of this business.
#4 Mumbai Indians - 2010
Mumbai Indians were considered a prominent team right from the first season of IPL, but got severely battered and bruised during the first two editions. Led by the Little Master Sachin Tendulkar in 2010, MI produced a resurgent bunch which included the franchise’s famous buy Kieron Pollard. They went to top the table thanks to some consistent performance from Sachin, Malinga, Harbhajan, Ambati Rayudu and Saurabh Tiwary.
An outstanding all-round effort from the big-man (Pollard) saw MI march on to the finals beating RCB in the semis. Wierd though it may seem, they faltered in the finals against CSK owing to some poor tactical errors by the team management. Sending in Abhishek Nayar and Harbhajan Singh at batting positions 3 and 4 respectively reserving Duminy and Pollard for 7 and 8 during a tough chase came under huge criticism.
#3 Royal Challengers Bangalore - 2010
After finishing as runners-up in IPL-2009, RCB came in with an unchanged squad. Though they had a mixed round of success during the regular round, they finished within the top four and reached the knock-out stage by virtue of out-staging DD and KKR on net-run-rate. Kallis and Uthappa were in tremendous form with the bat, while Kumble was miserly with the ball and Steyn was fast and accurate.
This led people to weigh in enough hopes on Vijay Mallya’s boys to grace through the finals and lift the cup. In the semifinal though, RCB put on a shoddy display with the ball against MI and even their chase never seemed to take off as they went on to lose the match. Even the experienced campaigners like Kallis and Dravid couldn’t save the team from sulking.
#2 Delhi Daredevils - 2009
The GMR Group owned IPL franchise DD started off as pre-tournament favorites as the squad boasted of phenomenal talent. The team was led by the maverick opener Gautam Gambhir who was accompanied by Virender Sehwag on the other end. This batting line-up was followed up by incredible men- AB de Villiers, Tillakaratne Dilshan and David Warner. The strong bowling unit had Amit Mishra and Daniel Vettori among others.
As expected, they out-performed all the seven franchises to stay on top of the table after the league stages. However, despite being dominant, the Daredevils crumbled in the semi-final under a fierce batting assault by the Deccan Chargers. They couldn’t even reach the finals; let alone winning the trophy.
#1 Deccan Chargers - 2008
If one were the owner of a T20 team that comprised names like Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi, Herschelle Gibbs and Chaminda Vaas, he would rather go on a nice holiday during the tournament season than racking his brain over the team’s performance. DC during the inaugural edition of the IPL in 2008 had the best possible combination among all the other franchises.
The final leaderboard saw this nifty team relegated to the bottom of the table with just two wins overall, justifiably sending waves of shock to everyone. The Hyderabad based team was on an unbelievable losing streak and as a result failed to qualify for the semi-finals.
Their legendary names were woeful with the bat. Even their costliest buy Andrew Symonds had to leave them to join his Australian national team, after playing in just three matches. This failure will remain the mother of all upsets in IPL.
