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The concept of players’ substitutions during an IPL match could be floated during Wednesday’s governing council meeting in Mumbai but the final call rests with BCCI president Sourav Ganguly. It has been learnt that a senior executive of the IPL operations team prepared a note a few months ago with an intention to do away with traditional playing XI.
According to the note, a ‘Power Player’ concept could be used, allowing a player, who is not a part of playing XI, to come in at the fall of a wicket or replace a bowler at any given point of time.
“The final call will rest with the BCCI president. He will certainly discuss with the IPL GC including chairman Brijesh Patel and other office bearers but a lot of factors needs to be taken into account,” a senior BCCI functionary told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
While Ganguly was unavailable for a comment, a source close to the president said that there is a lot of scepticism to introduce this concept which could basically change the grammar of cricket.
“Nothing has been decided yet. Also with four days left for Mushtaq Ali to begin, can this concept see the light of the day as yet? We don’t know yet,” the source said.
A section among IPL operations team wants to push the envelope and introduce the concept during Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (National T20 Tournament) starting November 9 but there is a section in the BCCI that believes it could specifically favour one particular high-profile franchise comprising veteran players.
“There is one particular team which needs a bit of cushion during 2020 IPL with the average age of its core players being 35 plus. Has the IPL operations guy, who prepared the concept note, kept that particular franchise in mind?” questioned another official.
The other question that has cropped up is how the anti-corruption unit will be able to handle the bookie-fixer menace in case of such a rule change? “These kinds of random player substitutions could mean that bookies and match-fixers will be working overtime. Guess the BCCI president will factor it in that also,” he said.
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