Anubhav Katheria
IPL franchise owners will meet with the BCCI on Wednesday evening ahead of the IPL 2025 mega auction, the key topic in that meeting would be the Impact player rule.
The impact player rule was introduced in the 2023 IPL season and has been a topic of discussion since it first came to light. It has divided the cricketing community where some are in favor of it, and some are against. It was introduced to make the tournament more interesting and thrilling, the broadcasters who have invested so much money in the IPL are strongly in favor of the rule while many cricketers and experts have criticized it.
BCCI is undecided with the rule’s future and will discuss this topic in the meeting with the IPL team owners. While the rule provides an additional player in the team, many say that it’s a threat for the all-rounders. The impact player rule has a negative impact in the development of all-rounders and place of all-rounders in the team. Since the rule is only for IPL and we don’t have an impact on player rule on the international level and ICC tournaments it is not beneficial for Indian cricket.
In IPL because of impact player rule the importance and role of all-rounders in the team is decreasing on the other hand all-rounder are very crucial for the Indian team, IPL provides a competitive environment to player against the best players in the world, it trains the Indian player for the national team and all-rounder not getting chances in the IPL as seen last year, will affect their performance for team India on international level.
Players take on Impact player rule:
Players like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Axar Patel have criticised the rule earlier.
Rohit Sharma said that he is not a big fan of the rule, cricket is played by 11 players and not 12. You are taking so much from the game just because of some entertainment for people around, guys like Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube are not getting a chance to bowl because of the rule, which is not a good thing for us, Rohit added.
Virat Kohli said that he agrees with Rohit, entertainment is one aspect of the game but there is no balance.
Axar Patel said that as an all-rounder he feels that an all-rounder’s role is in danger with the impact player rule, every team is looking to play either a pure batter or pure bowler as the impact player and the all rounders are not being used, with the impact player rule every team goes into the match thinking that they have 6 batters or bowlers depending on they are batting or bowling, which sometimes create a lot of confusion.
