It's IPL season again and the hot Indian summer is heating up with eight franchises tussling it out for one coveted trophy. While Chennai Super Kings and Kings XI Punjab have been neck and crop above the rest, Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils have found the going tough and languish at the bottom of the points table.

Teams like Sunrisers Hyderabad, Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals have been hit or miss and Royal Challengers Bangalore have been, well… Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Even as the kick start to the league has been one hell of an affair with so many matches going down to the wire, the bigger half of the IPL remains to be played. At this stage, most teams have identified their best XIs or ideally should have. Yet, some of them meet carrying a few players who haven't really contributed much and do not seem like doing so in the near future although in sport, you can never really write anyone off.

Here we bring to you four players who we think have been liabilities for their respective sides and why the team should look to move on from them.

Yuvraj Singh

The king of T20 cricket one-time and still the proud owner of the rare record of six sixes in an over in T20Is, Yuvraj Singh is a timeless cricketer. Most of them who wrote him off in 2011 before the World Cup had to eat their words as his swag and class were on full display in the Cup where he won the Man of the Series award.

He repeated his feats few years later when once again poor form hit him and he shook it off to return to the national side. However, Yuvraj is once again out of the Indian team and a purple patch seems rather unlikely given his poor start to the IPL 2018 campaign with Kings XI Punjab.

This season his scores read thus: 12, 4, 20, DNB, DNB and 14. While he has come in behind an in-form Chris Gayle and Lokesh Rahul, which means his time at the crease has been negligible, the flair and charisma has been missing from his batting. With someone like Manoj Tiwary, who had a superb season last year for Rising Pune Supergiant, waiting in the sidelines, it makes little sense to continue with Yuvraj.

Kieron Pollard

Perhaps the most suspicious selection in any playing XI in the IPL, it is strange that Kieron Pollard continues to occupy one of the four overseas slots in the Mumbai Indians line-up despite doing little of note.

It is understandable that teams want a player who can make a big impact in the XI but with Pollard barely bowling these days (Has bowled less than eight overs since the 2015 IPL), his role is restricted to that of a batsman. Even as a batsman he continues to come in way down the order and has been a huge flop this season.

It should ideally make Mumbai Indians question their decision to persist with Pollard. With the likes of JP Duminy, Siddhesh Lad and Ben Cutting waiting in the wings and Mumbai’s season going from bad to worse to worst, does it hurt to bench Pollard for once?

Wriddhiman Saha

He is the Indian Test wicket-keeper alright but Wriddhiman Saha has been so out of his elements this season for Sunrisers Hyderabad that it is starting to affect them. He has batted at no.3 or opened the innings but somehow hasn't hit the kind of form he boasted of at Kings XI last few seasons at the top.

In six matches this season, the wicket-keeper batsman has made a total of 62 runs at an average of 12.40. He has appeared clueless against the new ball and was dropped as an opener last game but walked in at the fall of the first wicket only to weigh Sunrisers down a bit later.

With Shreevats Goswami waiting in the wings, Sunrisers should perhaps move on from Saha atleast for a few games.

Ravindra Jadeja

That Jadeja was retained by Chennai Super Kings was in itself a surprise. The left-arm spinner hasn't been regularly used as a slow bowling option but has moved around the batting line-up, batting as high as no.5 in the game against Royal Challengers Bangalore at Chinnaswamy but has done little of note thus far.

Karn Sharma, Harbhajan Singh and Imran Tahir are available as slow bowlers for Chennai and each of them have been used at one stage or the other this IPL. With that in mind and the fact that Chennai could use Dhruv Shorey or Chaitanya Bishnoi in the playing XI, it makes little sense that Jadeja is persisted with.

If they do decide to meddle with their foreign players and use two Indian bowlers, they might be able to accomodate a David Willey or Lungi Ngidi in the starting XI.

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