5 T20 superstars who failed to make a mark in IPL

The captain of England’s limited-overs side, Eoin Morgan is a monumental personality and an inspirational leader like few others in the game. His calm demeanor and his shrewd tactics make cricket pundits linken him to MS Dhoni, arguably the best mind in T20 cricket. Along with his captaincy, his consistent and aggressive contributions with the bat have been one of the main reasons behind England’s phoenix-like rise in limited-overs cricket. Currently the defending ICC ODI World Cup captain, the Irish-born cricketer has achieved much more than he would have settled for at the start of his career.

However, Eoin Morgan would have bargained for much more in IPL than he got. Having played 83 matches for four IPL franchises since 2010, most of them for Kolkata Knight Riders, Morgan has scored at a shocking average of 22.66, with a barely-believable strike rate of 122.6. Any other player would have been discarded much sooner with those numbers. His finest hour in IPL came as a result of his captaincy, not his batting. In IPL 2021, Eoin Morgan led KKR to the finals, losing to Dhoni’s CSK in the end.

But his form was horrendous, to say the least. Scoring 133 runs in 17 matches at an average of 11.08 while striking at just 95.68, Morgan’s IPL 2021 might just be the worst IPL a recognized batsman ever had in IPL history while playing all the matches for their side. So it was not a surprise when the finalist captain of last season was neither retained by KKR nor picked up by any side at the auction.