Increase Overseas Players' Limit In IPL From 4 To 5, Says BCCI Official Ahead Of Introduction Of New Teams

The BCCI’s plans of introducing two more teams or at least one for the next season of the IPL has caused quite a stir among the existing eight franchises. The Indian cricket board has been contemplating the idea of expanding the IPL for quite some time now and is reportedly set to roll out the tender for two more teams after Diwali.

Recent reports suggested that the teams are not happy with the introduction of new teams as that would mean their revenue would be affected. Introduction of new teams will also make the mega auction mandatory, something which the existing teams are not impressed with.

According to reports, the franchise bosses ware worried over the quality of squads if the structure is changed from 8 to 10 teams. And the teams have now come up with yet another issue with BCCI’s expansion ideas. At present, each squad is allowed to have 8 overseas players in the roster and only four of them can be named in the playing XI.

The franchises are worried that if the league is expanded from 8 to 10, the pool of Indian players would be further deprived of quality, leading to problems in terms of the quality of players in the team.

“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 the Times of India.

Possible solution:

With the franchises worried over the quality of the teams, a top BCCI official has suggested a possible solution for the same. The official has suggested increasing the number of overseas players per playing XI from 4 to 5. The official is confident that such a move will solve the problem of quality being diluted to a large extent.

“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 was quoted as saying by the news outlet.

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