3 times IPL captains dropped themselves for the betterment of their teams

Even before the 2018 IPL auction, discarded Indian batsman Gautam Gambhir was quite vocal about his prospects of going back to Delhi Daredevils. He eventually joined Delhi and was named the captain of the franchise.

He kickstarted the season with a fifty against Kings XI Punjab. Since then, he has hardly contributed to the team's cause and has registered scores of 15, 8, 3 and 4. Even his form coming into the tournament wasn't good.

On top of his batting, his captaincy is not helping the team as Daredevils are at the bottom of the IPL points table. Putting his team ahead of him, he has stepped down from captaincy and in all likelihood, he might not feature in the playing XI as well.

This is not the first time when a captain decides to sit out of the playing XI for the betterment of the team. Let us take a look at thre instances when a captain dropped himself from the playing XI in IPL.

#3 Kumar Sangakkara

After the first few matches of the 2012 season, Deccan Chargers captain Kumar Sangakkara, who was having a below-par run, both as a captain and a batsman, decided to drop himself as the captain of the team.

The main motive behind this move was to make way for better overseas players who were warming the bench for the now-defunct franchise.

Sangakkara handed over the reigns to in-form Australian batsman Cameron White but the move did not work as much as the team management would have expected as they finished eighth in the nine-team tournament.