5 most under-utilised cricketers in IPL history

3) Faf Du Plessis

In all these years, Faf Du Plessis has been the knight in shining armor of the South African cricket. Be it his captaincy record or batting exploits, he has charted out some impressive numbers. In particular, his win rate of 60% across formats is among the best in the game. And to go with it, he has accumulated 11,000 international runs.

He may not have the aura of his counterparts AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla, but Faf has been the rock of their batting unit. His mental fortitude has helped the Proteas on numerous occasions. While most of the people remember him for his red-ball game, very few know that he has been mightily effective in T20s. He has a T20I century to his name, a feat not achieved by many South Africans.

However, Du Plessis isn’t preferred by many T20 franchises due to his lack of power game. The only T20 league which has used his skill set is IPL. Here he has been a permanent member of the Chennai Super Kings family for the last decade or so. He has gathered close to 1,900 runs in his 71 appearances.

Despite all his success with CSK, one cannot deny that the Faf has been under-utilised by MS Dhoni. He has been drafted into the team mostly in desperate times or based on playing conditions. The skipper of the Yellow team doesn’t like to make too many changes unless they are losing games consistently. Moreover, it has also to do with the league’s rule of just four overseas players in the playing XI.