IPL 2023 | Flawed teams, time overruns and more early trends emerging in the 16th IPL

Remember when MS Dhoni walked on to the ground to protest a no-ball decision a few years ago? The new player reviews for wides and no-balls rule is the cricketing equivalent of using a flame-thrower to catch a housefly.

The 16th Indian Premier League (IPL) is upon us! As always, it took a while to get going too — the first week featured a series of damp squibs, before Kolkata Knight Riders’ Rinku Singh pumped the tournament to life this weekend, hitting each of the last five balls of the chase against Gujarat Titans for six. And since then, we have had last-ball finishes on each night of the tournament. As the summer-long soap opera gets into its second act, here are some observations from the first leg of the season.

Also read: IPL 2023: How KKR star Rinku Singh became Indian cricket’s new sixer king

The unusual advertisers

In any given year, you can gauge the pulse of the nation from the profile of advertisers on the IPL broadcast. In the late 2010s, it was the ecommerce biggies. When the pandemic hit in 2020, life came to a standstill, while the IPL continued inside a self-contained bubble. With restaurants shut, online food ordering took off, and it was the turn of food-tech unicorns to bet big on the IPL. Then TikTok was booted out of India, short video platforms had a moment in the sun, and briefly became the dominant sponsors. Thereafter, we have had instant grocery, edtech, fantasy gaming, fintech (who can forget those Cred ads!) and inevitably crypto ruling the roost. Clearly, all signs of India Inc. embracing new-age tech with open arms.

I was keen to see the unabated forward march of tech as I tuned into the IPL this year. Imagine my surprise then, when I was greeted by a surfeit of surrogate advertising by pan masala brands. In between overs, every Bollywood hero worth his salt was popping silver granules, conveying slow-mo macho and machismo while chewing on ‘mouth fresheners’. Sharing screen time with these brands, is a jamboree of sports betting outfits thinly veiled as fantasy platforms, apart from a smattering of traditional businesses. This means that the two main advertiser categories bringing the IPL to us, operate on the fringes of ethicality and legality. This column doesn’t profess an opinion on these industries, but one does imagine that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry is scrutinising these developments. Questions on legality aside, the notable reduction of start-up capital feeding into the IPL is a sobering reminder of the tech slowdown and the funding winter.

Strike-rates back in focus

If wickets are the currency of cricket, T20 is that country with maximal inflation where the currency is least valued. However, 20 years since T20’s genesis, batters are still struggling to find the right level of aggression. For the past many seasons, top-order Indian batters have gone along sedately, accumulating risk-free run mountains. All these years, commentators would grin and bear uncomfortably without pointing fingers. Not in 2023, though. First, Harsha Bhogle made a sharp comment on Shikhar Dhawan’s slow start against Rajasthan Royals. People on Twitter accused Bhogle of choosing a soft target, while not being critical of bigger names. Next, the New Zealander Simon Doull who has emerged as a perceptive on-air voice accused Virat Kohli of deliberately slowing down for his 50 in Royal Challengers Bangalore’s high-scoring defeat against Lucknow Super Giants. Bhogle too joined the chorus. In the last week, KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma and David Warner have also faced the heat for slow batting.

Also read: IPL 2023: Sanju Samson fined Rs 12 lakh for slow over-rate

All those years back, Chris Gayle — the original Bradman of T20 — showed how it is done: Play out threatening bowlers cautiously, don’t bother with risky singles, and take down the weak links in the opposition with clean range-hitting. It’s a formula that worked really well for AB de Villiers, Jos Buttler, and early-stage Hardik Pandya. It’s vexing to still see openers score run-a-ball 30s in the hope of ‘making up’ with big hits if they bat deep; one hopes that IPL batting adapts sooner to the needs of the sport.

Someone with Kohli’s experience and accomplishment is unlikely to slow down on purpose for an IPL 50. Regardless of the accuracy of such claims — commentators showing the guts to criticise India’s holy cows is a welcome change. Long may this new-found spine last.

Flawed teams everywhere

Bangalore and Punjab have non-existent middle orders, Chennai have no punch in the pace department. Mumbai are listless in the absence of Jasprit Bumrah and Jofra Archer, and their bench can’t paper over Suryakumar Yadav’s disastrous run of form. Delhi and Hyderabad have suspect top orders, while Lucknow has a circumspect lower half. Gujarat and Rajasthan, perhaps, have the most balanced sides, and yet the Rajasthan Royals are being forced to play R. Ashwin as a top order batter, and Gujarat Titans’ best bet for their fateful 20th over against Kolkata was Yash Dayal.

I strongly believe that eight is the right number of teams for the IPL. There is only so much high-quality cricketing talent within, and outside India. Ten teams spread the talent base too thinly. The result is that every single team in this tournament is flawed.

As flawed as the teams are, they are all quite evenly matched. Which means, while the quality of cricket at times is middling, it is always exciting to watch. After a slow start in the first week, we have had last-ball finishes on four successive days. Rinku Singh’s incredible jailbreak in the Kolkata-Gujarat game on April 9, 2023, will be spoken about for decades to come, as will Harshal Patel’s missed Mankad off the last ball against Lucknow. May the excitement continue, but surely we can have the same with eight teams, while also being subject to a higher standard of cricket?

Rinku Singh hit five sixes off the last over to win the game for the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Impact of the new laws

The Impact Substitute rule is a great addition to the game. Several experts have pointed out that the law has not made a material difference, since the substitutes themselves haven’t always contributed a lot. That’s a rather simplistic view of the world. The impact of the mid-game substitute isn’t restricted to one player’s contribution, but changes the way the remaining 11 approach the entire match.

Teams are effectively being allowed to bowl specialist bowlers for their entire 20 overs, without having to resort to moderate allrounders. And hence, Shivam Dube, Rahul Tewatia and Vijay Shankar are unlikely to do much bowling this year. Top order batters with suspect fitness levels can come in for only one half of the game — we won’t see much of Prithvi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan or Ambati Rayudu on the field, and that cannot be a bad thing. Teams have a welcome cushion against freak injuries — Chennai lost Deepak Chahar one over into his spell against Mumbai, and Gujarat were without Kane Williamson after a fielding mishap in the first game of the tournament. In the past, such injuries reduced teams to just 10 active players, but now they have a cushion against such freak incidents.

The other law change involves the player reviews for wides and no-balls. It’s the cricketing equivalent of employing a flame-thrower to catch a housefly — its value addition is pyrrhic at best. In 2019, MS Dhoni walked onto the ground in protest of a no-ball ruling in the tense final overs of a CSK chase. Last year, the Delhi Capitals coach Praveen Amre did likewise, to question a tight no-ball. Such incidents are few and far between, and if anything, should have been censured more severely. Instead, the law makers have gone the other way.

In general, marginal extras do not have a significant sway on end outcomes, in the manner wickets or boundary calls do. These reviews are often being used tactically, in pure hope. They put the onus on the third umpire to deliver a fair decision on what is very often a nebulous judgement call. The unintended outcome from all of this is that it kills the momentum of a T20 game. Which brings us to an important question...

Where do the fans figure in all this?

We have all seen the news reports of fans in Chennai and Bangalore being subjected to terrible experiences at the turnstiles in their hunt for tickets. Fans are made to queue up overnight and under the sun, in jail-style files, with no access to food, water, kindness or consideration, and with the looming threat of a whack from the constabulary. And after all of that, most of them are sent home empty-handed. IPL teams are forced to reserve a large share of seats for sponsors and local clubs, and very few tickets even go on sale.

Okay, enough about the grounds. Surely, the TV and live-streaming experience should put the fans at the centre of it? After all, the IPL is billed as a summer extravaganza targeting people of all age-groups. Not quite. This is after all the tournament that had no qualms about introducing 10 minutes of dead air in the form of ‘strategic time-outs’ with the sole intention of broadcasting more ads. Add to this the natural in-game delays that are inevitable in tightly-fought T20s, and now the slovenly ruling of no-ball reviews: most IPL games are ending way past midnight, making it impossible for working professionals or students to watch games till the end. Left to their devices, the BCCI are unlikely to change anything about this, but there are signs that broadcasters and sponsors are not happy with the audience drop-offs. Perhaps, the threat of losing dollars will push the organizers to rethink some of these choices.