IPL 2017: Top 4 Teams to Qualify for Play-Offs

IPL 10 has successfully completed its first week with complete dominance. It saw a massive number of crowds turning to stadiums, and fans glued to their television sets until late midnight. Now, a question that is on everyone’s mind is which are the top four teams set to qualify for the knock-out or play-off stage of the tournament?

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinions, but considering the current performance of the teams, it is not an easy task to pick out top four teams randomly from the latest IPL League Points table 2017.

In the world of twenty-twenty cricket, anything can happen, but now that each of the teams has already played a couple of matches – it would be easy to handpick the top four teams raring to go to IPL play-off stage.

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB)

No matter, how they performed in the last season, sustaining a shocking 8-run defeat by SRH (Sunrisers Hyderabad) despite heroics from Gayle and Kohli in IPL 2016 final, as a matter of fact, team Bangalore still looks like a rock solid squad despite losing the few initial matches.

Now, that RCB’s inspirational captain Kohli is back, some outstanding performance from the team can be expected. Ab De Villiers already showed a glimpse of his amazing form by smashing 89 off 46 balls against KXIP after making his comeback to the side from an injury. The same can be said for Virat Kohli too; he scored 62-run knock against Mumbai Indians immediately after BCCI declared him fit to play the future matches.

RCB won the first match against Delhi Daredevils quite convincingly, but thereafter, some dip in their forms can be easily gauged from the fact they lost three consecutive IPL matches. But with quality match winners like Kohli, Gayle and De Villiers in the squad, it is no doubt that RCB will bounce back hard and certainly make their way to the play-off stage this season.

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH)

Like the previous year, SRH began pretty well in the 10th season by winning the first two encounters after falling away in the next two matches against Mumbai and Kolkata. Despite consecutive losses, Warner and his team look quite formidable now. Starting from an in-form opening pair of David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan to strong middle order batsmen like Naman Ojha, Yuvraj Singh and Moises Henriques, SRH look a pretty strong side.

SRH also have a lethal bowling combination of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, veteran Ashish Nehra, Rashid Khan (leg-break) and Mustafizur Rahman. Mustafizur was dropped from the previous encounter after conceding 34 runs in 2 overs the other day. Despite two losses SRH still stands a good chance to qualify for the Playoffs.

Mumbai Indians (MI) 

 Two-time IPL champion, Mumbai Indians can’t be ignored. They are a well-experienced side and know how to come back in form exactly when needed. In IPL 2015, they lost their first 6 matches of the tournament and then drastically changed everything with a title win that year.

This year, Mumbai have a quality bowling combinations of Harbhajan Singh, Malinga, McClenaghan and Bumrah. Not to forget, they have good batsmen too including the likes of Rohit Sharma, Kieron Pollard, Hardik Pandya and Parthiv Patel. After losing their opening encounter against the Rising Pune Supergiant, MI came back strongly and registered 3 consecutive victories on a trot.

Especially against RCB, Mumbai chased down a total of 143 after being reduced to 7/4 in the 3rd over. Despite their initial stutter, it was the brilliance from Kieron Pollard and the Pandya brothers who ensured Mumbai returned triumphant with 6 wickets in hand.

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)

Kolkata has always been a good side but they failed miserably in the first 3 editions of the tournament. They failed to qualify for the knock-out stage from 2008 to 2010 but then they turned things around in 2012 claiming the IPL title for the first time. There was no looking back since then under the meticulous captaincy of Gautam Gambhir. The southpaw led KKR to two IPL title wins in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

With an overall winning percent of 52 and quality team and prolific batsmen like Manish Pandey, Gambhir, Uthappa, Yusuf Pathan and Suryakumar Yadav, Kolkata will definitely go a long way this season. Not to forget, their astute bowling combination in Trent Boult, Kuldeep Yadav, Nathan Coulter-Nile and of course Shakib Al Hasan – the numero-uno all-rounder across formats.

In this edition, KKR has already registered 3 victories in 4 matches and looks in complete control of proceedings. Most of the team members are in a sensational form which will be a huge plus for KKR as the tournament progresses.

It may be still too early to predict anything but I got my playoff squads for IPL 10 in KKR, KXIP, MI and SRH. If you have any other suggestions, then please post on comments. Please note: even with Kohli’s comeback to RCB side, I don’t think they will make it to top four. What do you think guys?