My Thoughts

IPL V is in its first few games and again the teams find it hard to find nativity. Even though IPL is an interesting competition, the length is still a worry. The one and a half month tournament is sure to take a toll on the fans.

But the length of the tournament aside the major concern for me this year has been the team composition of the franchises. The teams have basically ignored the local talents in the team in search of glory. I thought that IPL was going to be used as a ground for nurturing and finding young talents but as the years passed by the franchises have gotten greedy. For example Ranji champions Mumbai are unable to find players from the Mumbai team to represent their IPL franchise Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan is even worse as they don’t even have a single local player representing them. The Pune Warriors does not have anyone from Maharashtra/Mumbai team in their X1 in the first game against Mumbai.

Rajasthan has been the worst offender off all the IPL teams. The franchise is been completely made up with Rest of India and the mandatory foreign players but there is no sign of any home grown talent. Ashok Maneria seems to be the only local boy in the Rajasthan Royals team. This I feel is ridiculous and shows how much money hungry the franchises have become. Mumbai Indians play just 2 players out of 8 in their team from the Mumbai team and Deccan Chargers somehow manage to play just one or sometimes 2 local players in their team. How do they expect locals to relate with the team if the entire team is made up of players from different teams? I am not against young Indian players getting a chance but ignoring local players takes away the charm of a city based rivalry.

Ranji teams like Maharashtra might have some good players and need to be explored and I hope that Pune Warriors team gives them a chance in the upcoming games. Creating a city based league is fine but forming a strong team with best talent across the country and the world was not what IPL promised us at the start. BCCI have to think to promote small teams and players. They do not get too much coverage. Rajasthan Royals and Pune Warriors seem to be the biggest offenders this year. The teams should be forced to play at least 2 home players in each team. It is not as if Rajasthan have a poor Ranji team.
This is the exact reason the IPL teams will find less success in the champion’s league. If you take Rajasthan and Pune for example, except for the 4 weeks of IPL none of their team members play together in any form of cricket unless they represent India. Entire year they play against each other and they are suddenly thrown together and are expected to gel as a team immediately. They will be playing teams in the CLT20 who play an entire year together and are more cohesive units in comparison to the IPL teams. The locals who play for team Rajasthan in Ranji trophy might actually feel little hard done by this situation. Teams like them who compete in the plate championship of the Ranji trophy hardly get any visibility with the selectors and a global tournament like the IPL should be used to showcase their talents.

Even though the tournament has been a success and is here to stay, the organizers need to look to correct the above glaring anomalies.