The IPL has reached its business end and four teams have made it to the play-offs – Royal Challengers Bangalore, Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders. Kings XI Punjab had an outside chance but their defeat to Deccan Chargers ended their 4 match winning streak and allowed Mumbai to reach the last 4 without much of trouble.3 out of the 4 teams that reached the play-offs have Indians as their captain and 4 out of 6 teams that did not made it to the final stage had foreign captains. Here’s the performance review of the 6 captains who were unable to take their teams past the league stage.

VIRENDER SEHWAG (DELHI DAREDEVILS, Rank-10, Won-4, Lost- 9, NR- 1)

Rating – 7/10(M- 11, Runs- 424, Average- 38.54)

Viru had an awesome season with the bat in this year’s IPL which was cut short by an injury. He scored a blazing century against Deccan Chargers. He also scored a blazing 80 and 77 against Kochi and Kings XI Punjab respectively. If some other batsmen of the team would have supported him, the story of Delhi Daredevils could have been different.  I was amazed at the selection of Delhi’s team. They decided to retain Sehwag and let go of other potential match winners almost all of which were absorbed by Royal Challengers Bangalore. If that doesn’t amaze you, consider this. Delhi Daredevils spent a whopping $2,810,000 on Irfan Pathan, Venu Gopal Rao and Ajit Agarkar. Yes, you read it correctly, Irfan Pathan. On the other hand, RCB spent $2,950,000 on Daniel Vettori, Tilakratne Dilshan, AB de Villiers and Dirk Nannes (all in Delhi Daredevils in the first three seasons).Can somebody define parameters for comparison of the above two sets of players? The spending of the Daredevils reminds me of spending done by the CWG’s Organizing Committee, for example Rs 10 lakhs for a treadmill!

I was also disappointed by foreign players of Delhi Daredevils. ’Unknowns’ is the word that comes to my mind. I’ll be honest, barring David Warner and Morne Morkel, I don’t remember any of the foreign players at the time of writing this article. Foreign players form the core of the team; they provide most of the strength to the team. I don’t see any team which has reached the semi-finals of the IPL without a strong set of foreign players. In Daredevils case, the ‘unknowns’ remained the ‘unknown’.

Sehwag got apay hike this season too. In the first three seasons, he would have been getting an amount of (725000 + 15% of 725000=) $833750 (As he was an Icon player). This year he was retained and the franchise had to pay $1.8 million for him, the amount that Sehwag would have actually got would have certainly been more than the previous year). As you can see from these graphs, Sehwag scored the most runs this season with the best average.Irfan Pathan got a pay hike too, of 105.4% ($1,900,000 from $925,000). My question is: What for?

If only Sehwag was ably supported by his men, the story for the Daredevils would have different (I wouldn’t have lent my DD jersey to a friend at least).