Indian Premier League (IPL) as a T20 league got a boost in popularity this year, but to confuse this with it being high-quality cricket would be wrong, former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar wrote in his article.
Published on ESPNCricinfo, the article sheds light on the quality of cricket played at IPL. “As far as quality goes, it wasn’t of a very high standard in terms of cricketing skills,” he admitted.
He further said that this shows cricket is becoming entertaining when there is intense competition between teams. Manjrekar said, “Fans don’t really care much about the quality of cricket, as long as it is an edge-of-the-seat kind of experience. International cricket must make a note of this.”
“It was generally a bad IPL for foreign players, especially for those who came with reputations owing to their big-hitting performances in the Big Bash and so on,” he wrote, adding “if you are not a good player of spin and don’t have the subtleties in your skills to account for spin, whether batting or bowling, you will struggle in the IPL. After this IPL, I see team owners getting a bit sceptical about the power hitters from England, Australia and South Africa.”
He opined that the problem is, there aren’t many bowlers who can bowl it consistently with control, adding that fans witnessed a large percentage of high full tosses as bowlers tried to get the ball into the blockhole. He said, “This, for me, is a definite parameter to judge the overall quality of T20 bowling by: how many bowlers can actually bowl good yorkers under pressure. Currently there aren’t any.”
