Lack of exposure to overseas T20 cricket is doing India more harm than good

SHUBI ARUN: The IPL is India's most powerful asset but it's also what's holding the country back, with the national side playing an archaic brand of T20 cricket

Indian T20 cricket is a study in dichotomy. On one hand, you have a board that sits atop the international cricket food chain and owns the Indian Premier League, arguably the sport's largest and most successful franchise tournament. On the other, you have a national side playing a brand of T20 cricket that feels archaic and which has failed to deliver a T20 World Cup title since 2007. 

The IPL is India's most powerful asset but it's also what's holding the country back. In 2010, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)  made a ruling barring active Indian players from participating in any foreign T20 leagues. They feared Indian involvement abroad would lower viewership and impact the sale of media rights. Safeguarding the domestic setup has been another reason cited behind it.

While the ruling has undoubtedly aided the IPL's growth into arguably the world's largest and most successful franchise cricket tournament, it has begun to strangle India in on the international stage. Quite simply, Indian cricketers just don't play enough.

"I do believe the IPL is the highest standard of international cricket but ultimately that's for two and a bit months a year. Whereas English players, Australian players or West Indian players, they're playing T20s for eight to ten months a year if they want to," said Dan Weston, senior data analyst at Kent and data insights manager at Birmingham Phoenix.

It is more of a quantity than quality problem. The volume of T20 cricket played by India does partially allay this issue: in 2022, Jos Buttler played 37 T20 matches while Suryakumar Yadav played 38. However, 31 of Yadav's outings came for his country as compared to 15 for Buttler.

^{The IPL is India's most powerful asset [BCCI]}

Go a rung lower and the disparity becomes more stark. Take the case of India's Ruturaj Gaikwad and England's Phil Salt, two 26 year-old top-order batters of roughly the same profile. Since 2020, Gaikwad has played approximately 16 T20 games each year while Salt, who is prolific on the franchise league circuit,  has averaged nearly 36 games a year in that period.

Now, Gaikwad may possess more talent than Salt - this is, after all a player who won the orange cap as the leading run-scorer during Chennai's IPL-winning campaign in 2021. But in a format as dynamic as T20s where batters need to play situations as much as they do bowlers, Salt's breadth of experience more than compensates for the skill gap.

The pipeline from IPL to the Indian team remains robust as ever but over time, the inbreeding of talent has created deficits. While India's conservative batting approach has been a lightning rod of criticism, Weston points to the lack of multidimensional players as a key factor behind India's woes in the format.

"There's something in the pathway which seems to prevent the development of those types of players, I'm not sure what it is. For good balance of a team, you want bowlers who can hit and top six batters who can bowl, even just as a matchup option because it enables you to have a lot more flexibility with your pre-match planning and execute different strategies as the game develops," he said.

"And I think that's one of the benefits as well with England - these players are playing so much around the world (that) it's enabled them to understand the skills the team wants and what drives success a lot more."

The skill issue creates a selection headache. Barring T20 internationals, there are essentially just two tournaments - the IPL and the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy - on the basis of which Indian players can be picked. If a player's team doesn't make it past the group stages, he then has at most 15 games to prove his mettle. This limited sample size magnifies performances and thereby leads to missteps in selection.

Varun Chakravarthy was picked ahead of Yuzvendra Chahal for the 2021 T20 World Cup off the back of one good IPL season, despite having played just three times for India prior to the tournament. He hasn't played international cricket since. Dinesh Karthik's selection for the 2022 T20 World Cup was another decision based on impulse rather than insight.

^{The contrasting careers of Ruturaj Gaikwad and Phil Salt illustrate the value of exposure to overseas leagues [Dibyangshu Sarkar/Noah Seelam/Getty Images]}

Following their limp exit to England in last year's tournament, India coach Rahul Dravid had "no doubt" that their rival's Big Bash experience gave them an advantage. Indeed, nine of England's playing XI had played in the BBL, but their edge goes beyond just exposure to Australian venues.

"Harry Brook, for example, actually really struggled in his first year abroad playing the Big Bash League and maybe that actually was the foundation for him to upskill particularly against spin, kick on as a player and we've seen that this last year and he's done that," said Weston

"Maybe he had to go through that tough time in a league with big boundaries where you don't get a lot of cheap runs to upskill and to get to the level that he is now. Would he have been the same player if he hadn't gone to the Big Bash and struggled? We don't know (but) it's definitely a positive for development. Struggling in a league overseas can be a really key part of someone's development."

There are examples closer to home for the BCCI to look at. Prior to the WPL, India's female cricketers had to look abroad for opportunities to butt heads with the best in the world. There were as many as seven Indians in the 2021/2022 Women's Big Bash while five Indians were involved in the inaugural edition of The Hundred.

Karunya Keshav, author of The Fire Burns Blue – A History of Women's Cricket In India, believes the players who went abroad benefited more from the preparation and training side of things than skill work, which is traditionally strong in India.

"They are exposed to new ways of doing things on and off the field, right from training under different coaches with different styles, to living independently and trying new food, which historically has been something Indian teams have struggled with," she said.

^{Harmanpreet Kaur is one of the women's players who has benefitted from time abroad [Mark Brake/Getty Images]}

Keshav believes the one player who benefited most from playing abroad is Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur, who was player of the tournament in the 2021/2022 WBBL.

"Always an aggressive player, the Australian way of approaching a game appealed to her and made her a more confident player. She's spoken about how she realised that the way she was eating and training until then wasn't good enough, that it changed her mindset about how much she could push her body.

"She thrived in the competitive environment that the WBBL fosters and has always been keen that more Indian women have access to a similar set-up with a WPL in India," she said.

And therein, lies a key point to this whole debate - Indian players may take their talents abroad but like Harmanpreet, they won't return empty handed. The experience and insights they glean will only help raise the level of the Indian leagues. The fact that numerous IPL teams now have foreign outposts will help in keeping the brand 'in-house' too.

While the BCCI's urge to protect its most prized product is understandable, it must soon realise that curtailing exports could devalue Indian cricket and, therefore, the IPL in the long run.