Flash in the pan - 10 One season wonders in the IPL

Flash in the pan – 10 One season wonders in the IPL: The Indian Premier League, since its advent in 2008, has been the centre of criticism from orthodox pundits of the game. The League has seen the emergence of many stars. While some have stayed on for the full stretch on the cricketing globe, others have vanished as fast as they appeared. Over the last eight years, unknown Indian players and some overseas guys, made a name for themselves with some magical performances in the shortest format of the game. One of the most pertinent arguments put forward against the cash-rich tournament has been the emergence of one-season wonders who would flatter to deceive before fading into darkness soon after. The trend has surprisingly continued for the last eight seasons as the league has never disappointed in throwing up a phenomenon or two each time. These yesteryear ‘stars’, however, continued to extinguish after 10 months of the league, with admirable consistency – as if they had always been destined to. The viewership, as a consequence, began to dwindle once this trend was established. As the eighth season of the IPL is in full flow, let us take a look back at the unfortunate cricketers who shot to fame overnight and raised expectations by leaps and bounds only to fail next season and die quiet deaths in public memory. 1. Paul Valthaty: Paul Valthaty IPL . (Photo Source: AFP) The biggest gainer of IPL was Punjab opener Paul Valthaty. With 463 runs in 14 matches, Valthaty also won the Volkswagen for the Best Individual performance of IPL 4. That honour was for his sensational 120 not out off 63 balls against Chennai Super Kings. Paul Chandrasekhar Valthaty was deemed to be the next big thing in T20 cricket after he smashed that unbeaten hundred against the Super Kings in 2011. He outshone the likes of Adam Gilchrist and Shaun Marsh at the top of the innings en route to ending the season with more than 400 runs from at an average of 35.61 and a strike-rate of 136.98. Hailing from Mumbai, Valthaty had earlier made headlines for making it to the U-19 World Cup in 2002 along with Irfan Pathan and Stuart Binny. An eye injury sustained against Bangladesh ruled him out of the World Cup and forced him into hibernation before his rocketing to limelight in IPL 4. The Kings XI opener, who can bowl some much-needed right-arm medium pace, fell short of maintaining his touch in the next season as he lingered around for only 6 matches scoring 30 runs before being forced to make way for more deserving alternatives. In his only match in 2013, he scored 6 runs against Sunrisers Hyderabad and got subsequently chucked out of the team in 2014. 2. Swapnil Asnodkar: Swapnil Asnodkar IPL. (Photo Source: Associated Press) The diminutive hard-hitter from Goa raised quite a few eyebrows when he impressed the Rajasthan Royals skipper Shane Warne in 2008. His daring stroke-play and aggressive approach to the game turned out to be the key for Royal’s triumphant run in the inaugural season of the IPL. Nicknamed ‘Goa Cannon’ by Warne himself, Asnodkar was hailed as one of the future stars who, if handled well, could develop into a destructive right-hand batsman. Blossoming under the Australian legend, the 24-year-old accumulated 311 runs in only nine matches at the end of the season. The graph, however, has been downhill since then. In the next three years, Asnodkar featured in 11 more games scoring barely more than a 100 runs. His average plummeted to 21.15 and he never got a match after the one against Kings XI Punjab in 2011. Eight years later, he has entirely disappeared from the cricketing arena leaving no trace behind even in the reserve benches. 3. Pradeep Sangwan: Pradeep Sangwan IPL. (Photo Source: Indian Premier League) Pradeep Sangwan’s debut for Delhi as a 17-year-old in the 2007-08 Ranji Trophy season, where he scalped 33 wickets at an average of 19.24, earned him a call-up to the U-19 World Cup in Malaysia. There, he impressed with an admirable display of fast bowling with a spell of 5/44 against South Africa in the group stages. A year later, Sangwan once again catapulted to fame for his remarkable outings in the Delhi Daredevils Jersey. 15 victims from 13 matches with the best match figures of 3/18 made him an invaluable part of the Delhi outfit. The promise shown, however, was not matched up to by his 2010 IPL performances, where his average climbed to 28.66. The left-armer, who idolizes Wasim Akram, turned up in only 3 IPL games in the following three years before being tested positive for a prohibited steroid during his stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders in 2013. He was banned from cricket for 18 months, thereby effectively making him vanish from the cricketing radar for the last couple of years. 4. Sreenath Aravind: Sreenath Aravind IPL. (Photo Source: AFP) A promising left-arm seamer from Karnataka, Sreenath Aravind turned up for the Bengaluru outfit in IPL 4 and went on to create havoc. With 21 wickets in 13 matches at a startling strike-rate of 13.14, he concluded the season as RCB’s leading wicket-taker before being involved with the team in the 2011 Champions’ league where they lost to the Mumbai Indians in the final. He earned a national call-up for the England tour in the same year although he didn’t get a match. The 2012 IPL saw him feature in just a single game where he leaked 48 runs off 3 wicketless over’s. The ensuing seasons conveniently wiped him off from public memory as he went back to doing the hard yards for Karnataka once again in the domestic circuit. 5. Manpreet Gony: Manpreet Gony IPL. (Photo Source: AFP) Chennai Super Kings’ leading wicket-taker in 2008 had been Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s go-to man during the inaugural season, the conclusion of which witnessed him turning out in national colours against Hong Kong and Bangladesh. The massive reputation built on IPL performances gave way once a string of domestic failures sidelined him from national reckoning. The sturdy seamer from Punjab with a tendency of hitting the deck had created a furore when he scalped an impressive tally of 17 wickets from 16 matches in the first IPL season. As injuries plagued his career, Gony seemed to lose his effectiveness, the result of which was him getting lesser and lesser matches in the following seasons. Failing to capitalize on the eight matches that he got in 2013 ended with him being out of contention for the whole 2014 version of the tournament. Although not technically out of the cricketing radar, it remains to be seen whether he has it in him to make an IPL comeback. 6. Joginder Sharma: Joginder Sharma CSK. (© Getty Images) All-rounder Joginder Sharma, the man who bowled the last over in 2007 Twenty20 World Championship final against Pakistan and won the trophy for India, is another in the list of missing IPL stars. Joginder, came nowhere near to replicating his first year’s showing with the ball in the subsequent editions. He had a decent IPL 1 with eight wickets from eight games but is to be seen nowhere today. Heralded then as the next Indian pace bowling all-rounder, Joginder hasn’t quite inspired the confidence of that kind thereafter. Currently he is struggling to even make an IPL squad. 7. Saurabh Tiwary: Saurabh Tiwary MI. (© Getty Images) With his long mane and strapping frame, this hard-hitting Ranchi batsman became a familiar face in IPL 2010, when he plundered 419 runs in 16 games. That performance earned him an India ODI cap before RCB snapped him up for USD 1.6 million in the 2011 IPL Player auction. But Tiwary, never justified the hefty amount paid for him. Often struggling to get going, he used up balls making the job difficult for fellow teammates. One has got to say that probably hair style and native places are the only two commonalities between him and M.S. Dhoni. 8. Shadab Jakati: Shadab Jakati CSK. (Photo Source: AFP) The left arm spinner was an unknown entity before the IPL. He flourished under MSD’s captaincy in the 2009 and 2010 IPL seasons by grabbing 13 wickets in both the seasons. Known for his miserly spells, his smart bowling made him a vital cog in the Chennai line up. But Jakati didn’t make it large at all and diminished from the arena in future seasons. Considered by many as a better left arm spinner to Jadeja, he fell out of the reckoning with the arrival of the million dollar baby and often had to sit out to make way. It has to be said though, that the spinner wasn’t dealt particularly fairly by the Chennai team. 9. Aiden Blizzard: Aiden Blizzard MI. (Photo Source: Associated Press) The 2011 player auctions brought in many hard hitting David Warner styled Australian batsmen. Of these Aiden Blizzard was one who got substantial success. Representing the Mumbai Indians, in 2011 he played some blinders at the top of the innings and was part of Mumbai’s successful Champions League T20 run later that year. In 2012 he played just one game scoring a three ball zero and with Ricky Ponting drafted in as the captain and Dwayne smith doing his bit as an opener, the doors shut for the Tasmanian batsman. 10. Sudeep Tyagi: Sudeep Tyagi CSK. (Photo Source: Google) Sudeep Tyagi, a former CSK man, burst into the domestic scene with a 10 wicket match haul on debut and finished that Ranji season as the highest wicket taker. His rise was made even faster, all credit to the impressive showing in the 2009 edition of the Indian Premier League played in South Africa. After that he went on to play 4 ODIs for India but it did not go according to plan. Tyagi failed to find a place in the CSK squad thereafter and was seen warming the bench for the Sunrisers in 2013. With close to 15 days left for the curtains to come down on IPL 8, we wonder how many top performers from this year will return for IPL 9.

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Flash in the pan - 10 One season wonders in the IPL

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