Gayle, AB de Villiers, Ishant: IPL 2017’s 5 Big Disappointments

Royal Challengers Bangalore isn’t the only thing on this list.

The big hitters, wicket-takers and match winners – every IPL has certain cricketers and teams who are expected to do well. But every season has its set of disappointments, and the list tends to grow as the season draws to a close. Some big buys fail to live up to their price tag, while some pre-tournament favourites end up at the bottom of the standings – forget make the play-offs – (Hello, RCB).

This time around, most of the disappointments came from Royal Challengers Bangalore. Keeping everything that has happened in mind, here’s a list of five big players/team(s) that forced us to use a whole lot of sad face emojis this season.

1. Chris Gayle

Usually a force to reckon with in the 20-over format, Chris Gayle has been a major disappointment for fans and RCB alike in IPL 2017.

He reached the mega 10,000-run mark, but consistent appearances and performance eluded the West Indies batsman this year. Appearing in nine out of RCB’s 14 league games, he scored just 200 runs at a strike-rate of 123. A man once known to hit the ball out of the park again and again, got out for a duck in two consecutive innings.

An apologetic Gayle signed off from the IPL, but not without giving his fans some hope for the future.

2. AB de Villiers

Another big-hitter who failed to perform with the bat this season was AB de Villiers.

After missing RCB’s first two IPL 10 games due to a back injury, ABD fired an unbeaten 89 against Kings XI Punjab in his IPL opener. But post that, all his innings were misses and he didn’t get another half-century, let alone a century.

In the nine league games he played, de Villiers scored a total of 216 runs at 133.

3. Royal Challengers Bangalore

Three wins, ten losses, and one washed out game sent ‘pre-tournament favourites’ RCB to the bottom of IPL standings. Despite boasting a line-up comprising four T20 giants – Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers and Shane Watson – the Bangalore franchise was the first team to be knocked out of the play-offs race.

Start from the top and the squad was hit by a string of injury pullouts, opener KL Rahul and Sarfaraz Khan stayed out for the season but Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers joined after the first few matches. Their inclusion in the XI though did nothing to the team’s placing in the league standings.

RCB had a poor run-rate of 7.50 runs per over and was the only team to average less than 20 runs per wicket. While every other team averaged more than 48 in the powerplay, Royal Challengers Bangalore were the worst with an average of just 41 runs in the first 36 balls.

From losing the opener to defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad, Bangalore went from bad to worse through the season – with the all-time low 49-run collapse against KKR in Kolkata on 23 April.

4. Lasith Malinga

A leading bowler in the Indian Premier League, eyed by the franchises and feared by batsmen – Lasith Malinga too has had a sporadic outing this season.

While he’s picked up wickets in almost every match, he has also proved to be expensive in certain innings. For instance, he conceded a total of 58 runs in four overs against Kings XI Punjab and 51 against Gujarat Lions.

In the 34 overs that he has bowled this IPL, Malinga has picked up nine wickets at an average of 35.88 with an economy rate of 9.50.

5. Ishant Sharma

Unsold at the auction because of a high base price, Ishant Sharma was picked by Kings XI Punjab as a replacement for Murali Vijay for the same amount – a whopping Rs 2 crore.

A ‘red ball specialist’ who'd been one of India’s leading bowlers in Tests, Ishant’s performance for Punjab this season has been dismal.

Besides the fact that he was picked to play only six games, Sharma picked up no wickets and gave away 179 runs in 18 overs.

Visit The Quint’s IPL 10 site for more.