Brad Hodge Reveals The Dark Side Of Indian Premier League

Every coin has two sides and the Indian Premier League is not an exception either. From the outside, the league is all about a great cricketing extravaganza in which the biggest names in the game and others play. Not to forget the entertainment the league provides and the huge money the players get for participating in it. But behind all this, there remains a world that no coach wants to live in. Former Australia batsman Brad Hodge, who has ample of experience of playing and coaching in IPL, has lifted the lid on the cut-throat competition in the league.

Hodge plied his trade as a player for Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals. He later took to coaching and guided the now-defunct Gujarat Lions to the playoffs in their inaugural season in 2016. Things did not fall in place in the following season and Gujarat Lions finished at seventh position in the eight-team competition. 2017 also turned out to be Gujarat Lions’ last year in the league and Hodge soon moved to Kings XI Punjab for IPL 2018.

Things started well and Kings XI Punjab won five of their opening six games. However, the season soon fell apart and they went on to finish seventh on the points table. A few months later, the franchise sacked him as the coach along side team mentor Virender Sehwag. Hodge, however, continues to coach in the Caribbean Premier League with St.Lucia Stars. Having plied his trade in almost all the major leagues across the world, he has now revealed that the culture in the IPL is different from most other T20 leagues.

“Look, it’s pretty cut-throat here actually… I sort of said to the Kings XI Punjab (owners), ‘How do you define success? What do you actually want to do?’ You haven’t won in ten years, so if I’m not to win next year, how am I defined?,” Brad Hodge told ESPNCricinfo.

“I sort of said to them (Kings XI owners), ‘How many times do you want to win (the IPL) in a decade?’ And I thought three is realistic. It doesn’t matter whether you win this year, next year or the year after. You could win three in a row in the mid-pack. Just that if you’ve won three in a decade… If you look at CSK, they’ve won three. Mumbai Indians, they’ve won three. They’ve got a successful ten years,” he added.

Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians have won the IPL thrice. But even Mumbai have changed coaches at regular intervals unlike Super Kings who have had Stephen Fleming as their coach since 2009.