5 star-studded teams that failed to win the IPL

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.

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.