Mumbai, 30th May 2023
The 16th season of the Tata Indian Premier League concluded on May 29, 2023, with the Chennai Super Kings defeating the Gujarat Titans with a last-ball win at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad, in a final that spanned across two days. The finals were hit by rain as not a single ball was bowled, and the game moved into reserve day. The reserve day also was hit by rains where DLS was applied and the match was 15 overs. The top four teams that qualified for the playoffs this season were the Gujarat Titans (GT), Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), and Mumbai Indians (MI).
The tournament ran for almost two months, making it one of the longest seasons of the IPL. This IPL season saw some dramatic finishes, new records being made, and old records being broken. Shubhman Gill bagged the orange cap for hitting the most runs in the season. With an average of 59.33, he scored 890 runs in 17 innings. Shubhman Gill also smashed the most number of centuries in this IPL season. He registered three-digit scores in the league and became the youngest player to score a century in the playoffs. Along with this, Shubhman Gill also registered the highest score in an IPL Playoff match with his 129 vs. Mumbai Indians.
The purple cap was earned by Mohammad Shami for taking the most scalps. He took 28 wickets at an average of 17.57 becoming the highest wicket-taker of the season. Four players registered a 5-Wicket haul to their names: Mohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Akash Madhwal, and Mark Wood.
This IPL season was one of the longest in its history, with 74 matches being played. This number was 60 in the 2021 season. It becomes stressful as well as tiring for players to run for such a long duration. The introduction of two teams, taking the tally to ten, has proved to be successful but has put an immense load on the players. The two new teams, Gujarat Titans and Lucknow Super Giants found their way through the league stage, with Gujarat reaching the finals consecutively. The debate should have been settled on whether the introduction of the two new teams has put the teams under performance pressure.
This season, teams were divided into groups of five. Each team was allotted 14 games where they would play twice with the teams of their group while encountering only once with members of the other group. This is a modified version of the Double Round Robin League, which was followed by the IPL earlier.
This time, the IPL was broadcasted on Jio Cinema. Viacom 18 bagged a five-year deal for the IPL’s broadcasting rights with a $2.7 billion agreement between the two. This deal, however, was questioned as users complained about facing a lot of server and connectivity issues with the streaming platform. Jio also tried its best to provide 5G connectivity to its users, along with the IPL being streamed for free but failed to provide a good experience for viewers. Many people complained about not being able to watch the matches due to server connectivity issues as well as app crashes since the first day of the tournament.
"Many times the live game won’t load when the app runs in the background. We had to restart the app again and again after clearing it from the system tray completely. It got irritating at one point in time," said Dhruv Falodia, a college student who is an avid cricket fan.
"During the streaming of the match, there always seem to be glitches; you know, the interface freezes. Also, during the match, there are times when the screen just completely blacks out, with just the audio in it," complained Viraj Chetri, who struggled to watch the IPL on Jio Cinema.
Besides facing issues on Jio Cinema, the IPL also received a lot of flak for using actors as commentators. Jio Cinema streamed the IPL in 11 regional languages, which was an attempt to include the diverse cultures of India, but their choice of commentators was at the receiving end of criticism due to their lack of experience and knowledge of cricket as a sport. Actors like Ravi Kishan bagged a lot of TRP for Jio but could not provide insights into the game like players turned into commentators do.
"Instead of taking these actors for commentary, IPL should have looked for state players who can speak in the local language as well as provide an insight into the game, but IPL has always been about more entertainment and less cricket," said a viewer, who wishes to be unnamed, who watched IPL in Bhojpuri.
This edition of the IPL also saw some major modifications in the process of conducting matches. One of the highlighted features of this change in conduct was that the teams had the option to declare the playing 11 after the toss concluded. This was done to enforce the "Impact Player Rule" in an efficient manner.
The Impact Player is a new introduction in the cricketing world where one player can be substituted mid-match per the suitability of a team. It can be used if a player is injured or to introduce an extra bowler or batsman to the team, which can be beneficial for the team. The impact player is a substitute player who can come in the middle of the match, replacing any member of the playing 11. The member who is replaced can’t take any further part in the match.
Many critics and players have pointed out that the impact of the player law has negated the role of all-rounders in the team. It was said that the Impact Player Rule provides an unfair advantage to teams with strong bench strength. It also negates the importance of team selection and disrupts team dynamics by changing the rhythm of the game. Besides this, critics pointed out that it shows the selectors lack clarity in selecting the playing 11 for a match. Moreover, the experts have also mentioned that the impact player rule has a potential for tactical misuse as players might be substituted based on the situation in the match and not the actual impact of the player. The IPL also introduced two decision review systems per innings for teams. They also increased their bracket by giving teams access to review for wide and no balls. This has enhanced fairer decisions that did justice to both teams. Umpiring quality has always been questioned in the IPL. The DRS access for wide and no balls gives the players a chance to turn over decisions that they might feel are unfair or not judged properly. The past few seasons of the IPL have seen a significant decline in umpiring standards, due to which teams lost their playoff berths. It also gave us a chance to deal with the biassed nature of umpires, which has been brought out often on social media. Over-rate penalties were introduced in this season of the IPL. The over-rate penalty in the Indian Premier League (IPL) is imposed on teams that fail to bowl their overs within the allocated time frame. The concept of an over-rate penalty aims to ensure that matches are completed within a reasonable time and that teams maintain an acceptable pace of play. If an over-rate penalty was enforced on a team, only four fielders would be allowed outside the 30-yard circle. This would recur for every over that was not completed on time. Unfair movements of the fielder and the wicketkeeper were also penalised. Both incidents resulted in a penalty of five runs and the delivery in which they happened being declared dead. This rule was made to prevent players from intimidating the batsman before the delivery by moving on any side of the field, forcing the batsman to rethink a shot. Better ways could have been made to manage the workload of the players but, the IPL 2023 still proved to be a promising season. It saw the redemption of old stars as well as the uplift of the young generation. While names like Rinku Singh and Yashasvi Jaiswal established their names in the batting legacy as matchwinners, we also saw the veteran Piyush Chawla make a spot in the list of top 5 wicket takers. All in all, the IPL season was a tedious but entertaining mega-sporting event of the cricketing year. With events like the finals of the World Test Championship and the ICC Cricket World Cup in line, cricketing fans are in for a treat the whole year.
Comentarios