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29 Mar 2024, Edition - 3181, Friday

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Sports

England’s IPL dozen learning as well as earning on cricket’s glitziest stage

The Guardian

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I don’t think it will ever be straightforward. It’s down to you as a player to be very honest with yourself and if you want to be a part of it, accept the fact that some people won’t have the same opinion. Everyone is different but that is why the world is so good and why life is so interesting.”

The “it” in question, if you haven’t guessed already, is the Indian Premier League and the words are spoken by a philosophical Jos Buttler during a catch-up in Bengaluru over the weekend. England’s one-day wicketkeeper speaks of retaining ambition for a Test match return but at the start of the county season, there is only one place he truly wants to be.

Buttler always seems to be fielding such questions these days. A unique ball-striking talent, many still wish to see him in the whites of his country. But with cricket’s tectonic plates having shifted so much in the last decade, and administrators yet to solve the scheduling Rubik’s Cube, only occasionally can he hop back over to the red-ball landmass to push his claims with Lancashire.

Instead, right now he is one of a record 12 English players at this year’s IPL, the powerhouse domestic tournament in which the country’s hulking great cricket grounds morph into thorax-thumping subwoofers and the world’s best Twenty20 players (bar those from the world’s No 1 side, Pakistan, it must be noted) duke it out for their adopted franchises over seven weeks.

In its 11th season, the IPL’s tractor beam is stronger than ever too with a record £1.8bn broadcast deal over the next five editions seeing each team’s squad budget swell by 20 % to £8.5m. Audiences have hit record highs and over the coming years international cricket will likely stop fully during this time.

Back in 2008 the PCA chief executive, Sean Morris, warned the England and Wales Cricket Board it risked becoming King Canute in denying its players the chance to join in. Four years later, one of the few to wriggle free, Kevin Pietersen, was bemoaning “jealousy” of the IPL back home and that “second-rate Australians” were taking the spots of his more talented team-mates.

Now, however, through a change in ECB policy and greater on-field enlightenment among the current crop of white-ball thrusters, English players are in demand – and in some cases, earning serious cash. Buttler plays at Rajasthan Royals alongside Ben Stokes, the Royal Challengers Bangalore have the two Brummies in Chris Woakes and Moeen Ali, Alex Hales and Chris Jordan are at Sunrisers Hyderabad, Mark Wood, David Willey and Sam Billings are Chennai Super Kings while Tom Curran is on his tod with Kolkata Knight Riders. Jason Roy and Liam Plunkett make up the contingent at Delhi Daredevils.

Only Australia, with 13 players present, is better represented in terms of overseas berths but unlike their longstanding rival, England’s dozen have been snapped up without a single coach from their country in place. On paper this could be viewed as a source of national pride however, given the tournament’s direct clash with the start of the spring-to-autumn county cricket season, they must still contend with disapproval from some quarters.

Some of this will doubtless stem from the fact that five of the above are yet to get a game. Moeen is among them, a player whom Worcestershire would love to have as they start life back in Division One, and whose recent demotion from the Test side is unlikely to be brief while he remains sat in the RCB dugout. His team-mate Woakes, similarly left out of England’s last Test in New Zealand, has been used in Bangalore’s four overseas slots to date but if he is recalled early, before the series with Pakistan, it will be in expectation rather than recent red-ball form.

To say that he or others will benefit only financially from the experience would be wrong, however. Where once the IPL went on reputation and brand-value above specific Twenty20 skills – leaving the quality questionable at times – the analysis that goes into each team’s pick is now deep and from the two matches The Spin has attended – RCB’s home games against Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals – the cricket has, truth be told, been pretty impressive.

On Friday Virat Kohli was left with the look of a man flummoxed by a street magician when Mujeeb Zadran, an exciting 17-year-old Afghani mystery spinner, lit up the bails when teasing a googly through his gate. But Umesh Yadav had earlier sent down a fearsome spell to remove three Kings XI batsmen, including Aaron Finch and Yuvraj Singh, in the space of an over, to set up the low-scoring home victory via the blade of Kohli’s fellow galactico, AB de Villiers.

Sunday’s match saw all grass removed from the pitch at the Chinaswammy and a run-fest unfold, with Kohli’s fastest IPL half-century – a 26-ball masterclass of pure cricket shots – unable to undo the earlier damage inflicted by Sanju Samson’s unbeaten 45-ball 92 in which 10 sixes were again stroked, rather than larruped, over the rope. English interest briefly peaked in a mini-duel between Buttler and Woakes, which saw the former heave a slower ball into the stands but the latter win out when a fast, low full toss was thumped to Kohli at mid-off.

The English players are also enthusing about the knowledge they are soaking up off the field too. Buttler says he is tapping into the cricket brain of Shane Warne, his team mentor, at every opportunity given it is “on a different level”, while Woakes has had his mind blown by RCB’s number two batting coach, Trent Woodhill, as regards a new approach to power-hitting.

And what are the bowlers learning? To mildly censor the answer offered by one such weary protagonist, in Twenty20 you’re either a king or a Canute. Whether you like it or not, English cricket is no longer the latter when it comes to the IPL.

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