5 things in IPL 2016 that no one saw coming

Form of India's Test openers

Rahul finished with an average of 44 and strike rate of 146 in IPL 2016

While it is true that Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan have played T20Is for India, the pair, along with KL Rahul have been a more regular part of the Indian Test team. And one of the major surprises of IPL 2016 was the performance of the trio.

Although all three have shown themselves to be capable of playing the shortest format of the game, the consistency of their performances in the 2016 edition was one that few would have seen coming. After his poor performances for India in T20Is in 2016, the most surprising of the trio was Shikhar Dhawan and the fact that he was one of only five batsman to have scored more than 500 runs in this year's tournament.

Murali Vijay was Kings XI's backbone at the top of the order and KL Rahul impressed both at the top of the order and in the middle order for RCB. The pair were in the top 11 run-scorers in the tournament and had a healthy average and strike rate as well. So it was surprising to note that only Rahul made it to the Indian limited-overs squad for Zimbabwe.