Players get more money playing IPL and are limited in their ambitions: Gavaskar | Cricket

As the IPL 2022 has come to an end, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has brought up an interesting point about players suffering from the ‘second-season’ syndrome. The term is used to describe a player who fails to repeat his exploits from the last season such as Venkatesh Iyer, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Varun Chakravarthy. All three of these players played out a remarkable IPL 2022 but couldn’t quite produce a repeat this season as all three of their franchises failed to qualify for the Playoffs. Weighing in on the same, Gavaskar mentioned that in order to pass a true verdict about a player, it is always advised to gauge the cricketer’s performances at least across two IPL seasons before coming up with a concrete judgment. 

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“As the IPL comes to its grand finale what have been the gains for Indian cricket? As it happens every year, the IPL has thrown up a few names of whom much can be expected in the future. That said, it’s also been seen how many of the first season stars fade away very quickly, proving the old saying ‘a flash in the pan’ absolutely right. The names are too many to reel off and they include guys who have scored a hundred or taken wickets and scored runs in the knockout stages of the tournament and that’s why it is always better to wait till their next season to find out if he is the real thing or just another false dawn,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.

“The second season syndrome hardly spares anybody and if the player can come back after that, then there’s a good chance that he will have a good career ahead of him. Of course, many an IPL star remains a T20 specialist and doesn’t feature much on the domestic circuit. Many of them are quite happy to do that as they get more money playing the IPL than the domestic circuit and so are quite content to be limited in their ambitions. Once again, these are a fair few so Indian cricket doesn’t really gain much from that.”

In addition, Gavaskar shared his views on the joy of watching fast bowlers operate in this season of the IPL. Several pacers such as Umran Malik, Prasidh Krishna, Mohsin Khan and Mukesh Choudhary came to the fore for their respective franchises and really cranked it up. Lockie Ferguson and Umran clocked the top two fastest deliveries of IPL 2022 and the pacers bending their backs and stirring up the speed gun made for some fascinating viewing, reckons Gavaskar.

“This time, there’s been an exciting batch of speedsters who have made the batsmen duck and weave and got the ball to thud hard into the wicketkeeper’s gloves. True, the pitches have had a fair covering of grass and that has helped them to get the carry that they otherwise wouldn’t have found, but still, the sight of a good fast bowler is probably more exciting than a batting prodigy,” he said.