New Delhi: India’s experienced off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin believes that the impact player rule in IPL has made the game fair and has increased the importance of strategy. Senior players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have criticized this rule as they believe that this will stop the development of all-rounders and there will be no balance between bat and ball.
This rule was implemented from IPL 2023 in which all teams can substitute one player (batsman or bowler) during their innings. Ashwin said on former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth’s Tamil YouTube show, “I think this rule is not that bad as it increases the importance of strategy.”
“The other side is that it doesn’t encourage all-rounders. But who’s stopping them? In this generation, they don’t do that (batsmen bowl or bowlers bat),” ESPN Cricinfo quoted the show as saying.
He said, “The impact player rule does not discourage them. Look at Venkatesh Iyer, he is performing brilliantly for Lancashire at the moment. There is a chance for new experiments and this makes the game fair. ” Ashwin said that this rule can bring balance to the game when there is dew.
He said, “When the matches become one-sided due to dew, the team bowling later has an extra option in response. If you are batting later, a batsman can be fielded in place of an extra bowler. This has given opportunities to players like Shahbaz Ahmed, Shivam Dubey, Dhruv Jurel.”