A Passage to India
The IPL has given India’s domestic players the chance to strut their stuff on the big stage and several of them have been catapulted into the national side on the back of successful Twenty20 performances since 2008
Tariq Engineer
25-Feb-2013
The IPL has given India’s domestic players the chance to strut their stuff on the big stage and several of them have been catapulted into the national side on the back of successful Twenty20 performances since 2008. But players need more than just the shine of the IPL on their resumes to succeed in international cricket, write Bharat Sundaresan and Karthik Krishnaswamy in the Indian Express.
Of the 19 cricketers who have made their ODI debuts for India since the first season of the IPL, 10 were picked largely on the basis of eye-catching displays in the aforementioned Twenty20 jamboree. Of those 10, only Yusuf Pathan and Ashwin were part of India's victorious World Cup squad. Apart from these two and Ravindra Jadeja -who has figured in 35 ODIs -the other seven have, between them, made only 21 appearances for the one-day side. For one reason or the other, not one player among Manpreet Singh Gony, Abhishek Nayar, Sudeep Tyagi, Ashok Dinda, Umesh Yadav, Naman Ojha and Saurabh Tiwary retained selectorial confidence for longer than five matches.
To be fair to the selectors, most of these players were only given opportunities as part of squad rotation in the months leading up to the World Cup. But the fact that so few made a persuasive case for more chances perhaps showed the disparity in quality between the IPL and international cricket. It also challenged the wisdom of picking players for 50-over games based on their T20 displays. Keeping in mind their mixed fortunes, it isn't clear how much emphasis the selectors will place on IPL performances this time around.
Tariq Engineer is a former senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo