Last Updated on 9 months ago by Charbel Coorey
The IPL and its impact on India’s limited-overs depth | Does India’s squad for Sri Lanka tour certify that India’s limited overs bench strength will come through the IPL?
Covid-19 has compelled cricket teams to alter their outlook towards many aspects, but the most critical of them has been to develop formidable bench strength to tackle any adverse, dynamic circumstance.
The English team had to complexly revamp their ODI squad in the wake of a Covid scare during the recent series with Pakistan. The fact that they still whitewashed the opposition with a hurriedly arranged, second-string squad shows the significant amount of backups that champion teams develop.
India’s attempt to send a parallel squad to Sri Lanka simultaneous to the first-team’s tour to England is a step in the same direction.
The pandemic has meant that taking along big squads in such tours is set to become a norm in international cricket. Yet, the sheer number of youngsters knocking the door for a national team call-up is so much that the Indian management still had an opportunity to send over a completely new-look setup to the island nation in order to complete the series.
The Indian side has more or less walked over the Sri Lankans in the last few years, so it arguably didn’t make much sense to engage the first-team in this particular tour. Instead, it provided an opportunity to give some international cricket experience to some of the finest talents from the country, most of whom have unsurprisingly derived from the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Upon the inception of the IPL, it was largely intended to serve as a catalyst for the growth of the T20 sport in the country along with providing an exciting, wider platform for the increasing talent pool of the country.
However, over the years, it rightly become a major source of assessing the capabilities of players in the limited-overs format. The tournament gives fringe batsmen the opportunity to face the best bowlers in the world. It allows up and coming Indian pacers to say test their death-bowling skills against some of the best finishers as well. All of this is seen and talked about by the masses at large and hence naturally shoots up a player’s chances of being called up to the national team.
The Indian squad for Sri Lanka comprises of many newcomers such as Ruturaj Gaikwad, Devdutt Padikkal, Chetan Sakariya, Krishnappa Gowtham, Varun Chakravarthy, Nitish Rana amongst others. Most of these players become household names through the IPL, although it is not to discredit their domestic performances in any way.
In fact, the likes of Gaikwad, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Rahul Chahar amongst others have slogged it out immensely in the India A circuit before making their way to the senior team. Moreover, the basis of most of these players’ selection for their IPL teams continues to be their domestic performances.
Of course, this has certain exceptions like Chakravarthy or others who were spotted by their respective managements very early on in their domestic career. However, a wider audience base got acquainted with the finer abilities of someone like Gaikwad or Padikkal only through the IPL.
Ruturaj’s innate ease at facing top-class express pacers, Padikkal’s emergence offering further solidity and flair to RCB’s lineup have all been major talking points in the last couple of seasons. To dismiss its influence in their selection for this tour would be incorrect. Similarly, Sakariya impressed many with his skillsets by scalping seven wickets in seven IPL matches this year for the Rajasthan Royals.
He even drew praise from the likes of Kumar Sangakkara and many have applauded the young lad for his sheer temperament whilst combating several terrifying personal issues in the recent past. Add to the fact that he is a left-armed pacer, a commodity that is severely lacking in Indian cricket.
The Indian team has made their fair share of experiments with leftie pacers in the past but none of them have provided great outputs yet. Hence, experimenting with Sakariya seemed viable, especially given he showed enough mettle against some top quality international batsmen during the course of the IPL.
The series is underway and India started with a comfortable victory. The squad lays enough emphasis on the impact and influence that strong performances in the IPL tends to have with respect to national team prospects for budding cricketers. This might perhaps also be a byproduct of a curtailed domestic season last time around owing the Covid-19 situation across the country.
But, it cannot be denied that IPL has become a valuable parameter to judge the potential of players on the brink of the national team. Solid domestic outings coupled with a showcase of flair, quality and consistency in the franchise tournament certainly have a robust influence amongst the selectors.
The pressure that players go through during the IPL can very well be matched to that one undergoes in the international circuit. So, the tournament does holistically hone the players for the forthcoming challenges that the might encounter in the international circuit.
The series arguably marks a rather significant shift in Indian cricket, considering that the once-taboo topic of IPL performances stimulating a player’s international cricket ambitions has now been streamlined!
Written by Tarkesh Jha. Follow Tarkesh on Twitter today.
