Not a big fan of impact player; its holding back development of all-rounders, says Rohit Sharma

New Delhi, April 18 (IANS) India captain Rohit Sharma said he is not a big fan of the Impact Player ruling in the Indian Premier League (IPL), saying that it is holding back the development of all-rounders in Indian cricket ecosystem.

Rohit also cited the examples of Shivam Dube not getting any bowling for Chennai Super Kings in IPL 2024 due to being used as an impact player and of Washington Sundar not getting consistent game time at Sunrisers Hyderabad, where he has played just one match in the tournament.

“I generally feel that it is going to hold back (development of allrounders) because eventually cricket is played by 11 players, not 12 players. I’m not a big fan of impact player. You are taking out so much from the game just to make it little entertainment for the people around.”

“But if you look (at) genuinely just cricketing aspect of it, I can give you so many examples – guys like Washington Sundar, Shivam Dube are not getting to bowl, which for us (from India team point of view) is not a good thing,” said Rohit on the Club Prairie Podcast, which is co-hosted by Adam Gilchrist and Michael Vaughan.

The impact player ruling was introduced in IPL 2023 after a successful trialling in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and is still being used in IPL 2024. The rule allows all ten teams to bring in a player from the five nominated substitutes at any point in a match to replace a player in the playing eleven once the match began.

“I don’t know what you can do about it, but I’m not a fan of it honestly speaking. Because there’s obviously 12 players for you to select from and whoever that impact player is, you can see how the game is going and change it later depending on what you need, what pitch is behaving.”

“If you bat well, if you don’t lose wickets, you can add another bowler so it gives you an option of having six or seven bowlers. You don’t need that extra batter because a lot of the teams actually upfront are batting well, and then you hardly see Nos. 7 or 8 coming to bat,” added Rohit.

Asked by Vaughan if it would be great for India and Pakistan to face-off in Test cricket regularly, Rohit replied in the affirmative. “I totally believe that! They are a good team. They have got a superb bowling line-up. So it’ll be a good contest especially if you play overseas conditions.”

“That’ll be awesome. Last test match played between India and Pakistan was way back I think in 2006 or 2008 (in 2007, when India won 1-0), where Wasim Jaffar got a double hundred in Kolkata.”

Further quizzed by Vaughan if he would be interested in playing bilateral series against Pakistan outside of ICC tournaments, something which hasn’t happened since 2012-13, Rohit welcomed the idea.

“Yeah, I would love to. At the end of the day, we want to be in contest and I think it will be a great contest between the two sides. We anyway play them in ICC trophies, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s just pure cricket that I’m looking at. I’m not interested in anything else. It’s pure cricket, game between bat and ball. It’ll be a great contest.”