Mumbai: Many players in this IPL edition were expected to take the tournament by storm and lift their team. For some key players, though, it has been an extended drought in the season’s first half, which has in turn affected their teams’ results.
Take Ruturaj Gaikwad. For Chennai Super Kings, the captain and opener was expected to be the batting mainstay. While he has yet to fully settle into captaincy and emerge from MS Dhoni’s shadow, he had consistently shone as a batter for CSK, regularly scoring over 500 runs a season.
This edition he has failed to match those performances. It could be captaincy pressure or issues of rhythm as he had frequent injury breaks. The CSK team management will be hoping it is the latter, for with more game time he can come into his own.
The team has fully backed Gaikwad but Saturday’s loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad will be difficult to accept. Once their bowlers restricted SRH to 194 from a super start of 75/0, it was CSK’s game to lose. And they lost by 10 runs.
Gaikwad was forthright in his analysis.
“Looking at how their Powerplay went, I was looking at 220-230. To pull it back by 30, I would have taken it any day. It was just about 80 runs needed in 10 overs in the chase. From there it was just about building a couple of partnerships. We scored just four runs in the next two overs after the 10-over mark. Chasing 12-13 at the death was going to be difficult,” he said in his post-match interview with the broadcaster.
What is also affecting CSK is that Gaikwad himself is not among the runs. In six games, he has scored 82 runs at an average of 13.67 and an SR of 112.33. Since he was not clicking as opener, there was a thought that he should bat at No.3, but with young Ayush Mhatre suffering a hamstring tear while batting with Gaikwad on Saturday, that option is also unavailable.
CSK is languishing at No.7 spot in the 10-team points table. The three teams below them also face the issue of their key players not firing.
Kolkata Knight Riders, who are at the bottom of the pile, have suffered due to a lack of contribution from opener Finn Allen and finisher Rinku Singh. KKR were heavily banking on their New Zealand opener, that he will be their match-winner, providing blazing starts like Rajasthan Royals’ Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.
A frustrated KKR team management benched him after paltry returns of 81 runs in five innings at an average of 16.20 and played his compatriot Tim Seifert instead.
Their India star Rinku too failed, scoring just 79 runs at an average of 19.75 (SR 117.91). It upset their batting plans and KKR were left with five defeats in six games until Sunday. Rinku proved a point, and his value for KKR, with an unbeaten fifty that handed a first win of IPL 2026, versus Rajasthan Royals at Eden Gardens.
However, these are the kind of players around whom the team’s batting or bowling revolves.
Without match-winning contributions from their talismanic players such as Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav, five-time champions Mumbai Indians are a pale shadow of last year’s side that reached the play-offs.
They are down at No. 9 in the table after four defeats in five games. Bumrah is wicket-less this season while Yadav’s form is nowhere near last season’s when he got 700-plus runs. In five innings, he totals 106 runs at 21.20 (SR 151.43). A 36-ball 51 versus Delhi Capitals has been his best show this season.
Since 2016, Bumrah has been MI’s 15-plus wickets a season bowler. With his penetrative bowling missing, MI have struggled to contain the opposition. His economy rate of 8.63 is also the highest since 2016.
Lucknow Super Giants have only two wins from five games and are in eighth spot. There were high expectations from Aiden Markram after his blazing form in the T20 World Cup for South Africa, but his best in five matches has been a 27-ball 45. Overall, he has 120 runs at an average of 24 (SR 151.90).
The biggest setback for LSG has been the form of Nicholas Pooran. The left-handed power-hitter, who scored 524 runs last season, has made just 42 in five innings at 8.40 (SR 76.36).
There is still a lot of cricket to be played in IPL. If these bottom four sides are to find a way up, their key players will have to make their presence felt.