IPL : “Added overseas player will balance out that need,” BCCI official suggest raising the cap on foreign players for upcoming season

IPL : “Added overseas player will balance out that need,” BCCI official suggest raising the cap on foreign players for upcoming season

BCCI Officials

bcci officials
BCCI Officials

After a successful season the Indian Premier League, despite the trying time, the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) is looking to expand the cash-rich league next season. Reports suggest that BCCI is planning to float the tender of two new franchise post-Diwali. And the news has the existing franchises in a fix.

The league was designed to promote the Indian talents and help them gain experience against world-class players. For the same reason, each team each squad can have 8 overseas players in the roster, only 4 can feature in the playing XI.

The quality gets further diluted

Dream11 IPL Trophy

Franchise owners are worried that “mega auction” means the quality of Indian talent will get diluted. The “mega auction” is inevitable with two new franchises joining. They fear the delicate balance of the local and overseas players they have toiled to maintain will all go in vain with the new franchises come in. This would further affect the level of competition in the league.

“Teams are already finding it difficult to ensure quality. If we look at most IPL squads, around seven to nine players form the core while two to three players per squad are rotated to find the right balance. Now, if eight franchises are increased to 10, that quality further gets diluted. IPL’s core – the very essence of having a salary purse every year – is to ensure the overall quality of all eight franchises remains somewhere at the same level, regardless of an individual franchise’s spending capacity. If two extra teams draw from the same pool of cricketers at the auction, can the quality be guaranteed,” existing franchises asked as per a TOI report.

As a solution to this problem, a BCCI official suggested raising the cap of foreign players for the next season. He points out that the cap leaves out many big guns of the name. And it is only sensible to give them chance while maintaining the quality of the league.

“There are quality overseas players who are warming the bench every season because of the restriction. An added overseas player will balance out that need,” the official is said to have suggested.

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