The IMPACT of Impact Player rule

However interesting the rule might be for the spectators, it reduces the importance of certain types of players.

Bengaluru: When the last edition of the Indian Premier League was imminent, Venkatesh Iyer was thrilled to bits once the National Cricket Academy gave him the green signal to bowl following a rehabilitation stint after surgery to his injured ankle. With 50-over World Cup slots up for grabs if you happened to be a pace-bowling all-rounder, the Madhya Pradesh cricketer was looking forward to displaying his all-round abilities for Kolkata Knight Riders and putting himself in the reckoning. But little did Iyer know that the Impact Player (IP) rule, which was introduced just ahead of this year's IPL, would restrict him from showcasing his bowling skills. As it turned out, the 28-year-old was used as an Impact Player, either subbing a bowler or being subbed by a bowler.

"Honestly, with the coming of impact players, the number of overs an all-rounder is bowling has dropped down drastically," Iyer had said during the course of the IPL. 

It was a similar tale with another pace-bowling all-rounder, Shivam Dube, who didn't get to bowl a single over for Chennai Super Kings even though he wasn't always employed as an IP. The provision, though, had a major influence in the Mumbai player limiting himself to just batting.

“If I talk about the CSK team, the sixth option itself was Moeen Ali. I come as the seventh option, so it’s only if it’s very much required. That is one thing because of the Impact Player rule. I am trying to make myself better so that I can contribute one or two overs for the team,” Dube had averred then.

Dube, in fact, was used sparingly even by Mumbai skipper Ajinkya Rahane in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy tournament (T20), where he sent down just four overs in eight matches though he conceded just 17 runs combined. This is the issue with the rule that, however interesting it might be for the spectators, it reduces the importance of certain types of players. It also affects the thinking of a captain, who would rather have a specialist bowler doing the job for him than an all-rounder. Besides, the rule discourages captains from taking chances with their specialist batters, who otherwise would be capable of chipping in with an over or two.    

"Obviously, if a team has a specialist bowler as their sixth bowler and they don't want to try their all-rounder.... this is what impact player rule has brought. It has lessened the utility of all-rounders," said Iyer, substantiating the adverse impact of the rule.

To say that the impact player rule is hindering the development of Indian all-rounders would be a sweeping generalisation for it has been experimented in just one edition so far. But going forward, there's little doubt that it's going to have a big influence on the growth (or the lack of it) of players with multiple skills because IPL has that kind of impact (no pun intended) on the minds of young cricketers.

"It's a trend seen more among batters than bowlers," says Irfan Sait, who runs the Karnataka Institute of Cricket, when asked if he has observed players wanting to be specialists rather than multi-faceted cricketers. "It's not huge, but it's slowly creeping in wherein a few youngsters just want to be impact players. They just want to bulk up and hit the ball into the galleries. They aren't interested in bowling at all."

Another unwelcome consequence of the IP rule is it leads to a generation of poor fielders. Imagine a batter going 14 matches without fielding even once in a format where fielding can't be compromised because he gets replaced by a bowler while defending a target or he sits out as a replacement for a bowler when his team bats first.

Similarly, if a bowler has the ability to bat a bit, he will not a get a chance to improve his batting skills against international-standard bowling as he most probably gets replaced by a specialist batter.   

Quality all-rounders, especially of the pace-bowling kind, are hard to come by. It's been almost 30 years since Kapil Dev retired, and while it's unrealistic to expect someone of his league, India haven't been able to produce another all-rounder who can come even close to his standard. Even an Irfan Pathan or a Hardik Pandya would go a long way in providing depth to the squad in both departments. And if this is the case without the IP rule, imagine its impact in the post-IP era.

On the one hand, we are reducing the all-rounders already available to just batters while the future generation is encouraged to take up just batting. These are the twin problems -- lack of dependable all-rounders (like Pandya) or the absence of batters who can roll their arm around (like Yuvraj Singh or Virender Sehwag or the young Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly) -- that the Indian team has been facing for a few years when it comes to white-ball cricket. While it's unsound to attribute India's defeat to Australia in the World Cup final to the absence of a player like Pandya, it's possible that he could have made a difference either with the bat or the ball or both. India sorely missed a seventh batter (excluding Ravindra Jadeja) and a sixth bowler on the day. 

And it's been Inda's story since their 2011 World Cup triumph, post which there was a phased exit of multi-skilled players like Yuvraj, Sehwag, Suresh Raina and Yusuf Pathan, among others.

More tellingly, there is no cushion of the impact player at the international level, let’s not forget.