How the IPL captains evolved over the years

2008: The inaugural edition could not assemble the eight captains but it did mark the start of a new era in cricket.

2009: Kolkata Knight Riders coach John Buchanan attracted a lot of controversies by coming up with multiple captain’s theory and then finally settling into New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum.

2010: IPL returned to India after a one-year stopgap South Africa tour.

2011: The last time all franchises reshuffled their teams and not forget the only IPL with ten teams in it.

2012: Sahara Pune Warriors played its last IPL and it was led by former India stalwart Sourav Ganguly.

2013: Rohit Sharma entered into the league to lead Mumbai Indians to its maiden IPL title. In the next four years he would go on to lead Mumbai to another couple of IPL trophies.

2014:How many of you remember Kevin Pietersen leading an IPL side? Well he did lead the Delhi Daredevils in 2014 but had to replaced by Dinesh Karthik after falling prey to an injury.

2015: The trophy may be missing; the exuberance on the captain’s faces is certainly not.

2016: The year that saw the exit of Chennai Super Kings and the entry of two new franchises – Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions.

2017: The only time when MS Dhoni did not feature in the captain’s photograph of IPL. Australia’s Steve Smith replaced the captain cool as the Rising Pune Supergiant captain.

This gives us a chance to have a look at the captains of the previous ten seasons of the IPL.

The new captains came together for the first time and perhaps the only time for IPL 11 as all of them won’t take part in the opening ceremony.

In less than 30 hours time, cricket’s biggest carnival will step into its eleventh edition. Before that, following the tradition, all the eight captains posed with the IPL trophy.