IPL’s ‘Impact Player’ rule: Before the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the discussion on the impact player rule has started again. Senior players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have criticized this rule. They believe that this will stop the development of all-rounders and there will be no balance between ball and bat. On the other hand, India’s experienced off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has a completely different opinion.
37-year-old Ashwin believes that the impact player rule in IPL has made the game fair and has increased the importance of strategy. This rule was implemented from IPL 2023, in which all teams can substitute one player (batsman or bowler) during their innings.
“I think this rule is not that bad because it increases the importance of strategy,” Ashwin said on former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth’s Tamil YouTube show. “The other side is that it does not encourage all-rounders. But who is stopping them? In this generation, they don’t do it (batsmen bowling or bowlers batting),” ESPN Cricinfo quoted the show as saying.
He said, ‘The impact player rule does not discourage them. Look at Venkatesh Iyer, he is performing brilliantly for Lancashire at the moment. There is a chance for new experiments and this makes the game fair.’ Ashwin, who has been playing IPL since 2009, has taken 180 wickets in 212 matches so far.
Ashwin said that this rule can bring balance in the game when there is dew. He said, ‘When the matches become one-sided due to dew, the team bowling later has an extra option in response. If you are batting later, a batsman can be fielded in place of the extra bowler. This has given opportunities to players like Shahbaz Ahmed, Shivam Dubey, Dhruv Jurel.’
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)