‘It has lessened utility of all-rounders…’: Venkatesh Iyer on Impact Player rule in IPL 2023

New Delhi: Venkatesh Iyer, who scored a cracking century against Mumbai Indians in IPL 2023, added his views to the discourse of impact player. The KKR batter opined that the inclusion of the Impact Player rule has affected the all-rounders. He talked about how the rule has led to all-rounders bowling fewer overs as teams include a specialist bowler.

Talking about the rule, Iyer said that with the coming of impact players, the number of overs bowled by an all-rounder has dropped drastically. He said that a team gets a specialist bowler as their sixth option and does not want to try an all-rounder. He added that the rule has ‘lessened the utility’ of all-rounders.

Mentioning how big the tournament IPL is, he believes that every team now knows how to use an impact player and impact players are turning out to be an X factor.

Venkatesh Iyer, who is an all-rounder himself, has not bowled a single over this season. On his bowling, he said that he is ‘100 percent ready’ to bowl and was given clearance by the NCA. Iyer was out of play for some time due to an ankle injury. Coming after a recovery, the KKR player said that the most pleasing thing is not the runs he is scoring, but that he is back on the field and playing in IPL.

In the last game, Venkatesh scored 104 off 51, fighting a lone battle to take his team to 185. He was substituted as KKR brought in Suyash Sharma as the impact player in the second inning, who picked two wickets. Iyer’s ton was just the second one for KKR after Brendon McCullum’s 158 in the very first IPL match, but it went in vain as MI chased 186.