State T20 leagues play a vital part in India's cricket ecosystem, but they're being taken for granted

What is easier: playing in the Delhi Premier League (DPL) or the IPL? This was one of the questions put to Priyansh Arya after his stunning hundred against five-time champions Chennai Super Kings last month. Arya responded "DPL" with a shy smile. That mention may have brought Indian state T20 leagues a bit of global prime-time attention, but these leagues have been getting plenty of regular acknowledgement from IPL teams themselves as they look for new talent.

Many Indian states now have a T20 league run by the state association. These are more often than not broadcast on TV, and conducted with energy and excitement comparable to the IPL's. I was part of the inaugural Tamil Nadu Premier League in 2016, which was one of the earliest such in the country. For a tournament that only lasted three weeks, it offered significant financial rewards to many cricketers. In the early years of that league, cinema stars were brand ambassadors, and corporates queued up to get their branding on the team uniform. It seemed like a venture destined for success.

The TNPL will conduct its tenth season in 2025, but the league is barely profitable now. Its CEO, Prasanna Kannan, says the TNPL looks to unearth players from all corners of the state to ensure a streamlined supply of talent for the higher levels of cricket. "TN has produced at least seven to eight spinners at one point for the IPL," he says. "Not everyone may get to play in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, but the IPL teams [have] an opportunity to spot [players] at the TNPL."

Tamil Nadu currently has R Ashwin, Sai Kishore, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy and M Siddharth in various teams in the IPL. M Ashwin from the state too has been part of IPL teams in the recent past. Only two or three spinners can play for Tamil Nadu at any given point, but the TNPL, with eight teams, provides more players exposure - and thus more of an opportunity for IPL teams to take notice of them. The TNPL is played across four venues, and it was the pioneer in introducing DRS for all games.

Aniket Verma was picked for Sunrisers Hyderabad on the back of some stellar performances in the Madhya Pradesh Premier League (MPL). An innings of 123 off 41 balls with 13 sixes for Bhopal Leopards was enough to not only convince SRH to pick him at the last auction but also to start him in all 12 of their games so far. He has had decent returns in the IPL and has turned out to be one of the smarter picks in the auction.

SRH are one of those teams who don't have scouts in every league in the country. Teams like this benefit from the broadcast of the state leagues. They were able to assess Aniket's talent remotely and ensured he was given a run from the first game after he excelled at the trials and the practice games that followed. Interestingly, even after he was picked by SRH, his state gave him just one chance in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where he got a zero on debut and did not play again.

Digvesh Rathi played just two games for Delhi after being picked up by Lucknow Super Giants at the IPL auction. He too has more IPL games than SMAT ones, and is the highest wicket-taker for LSG this season.

Scouting is often regarded only as the ability to unearth a gem from some nook of our country. I see so many social media posts where people credit teams for giving caps to players from local leagues. Yes, that is one part of it, but sometimes scouting is also about making sure you get the best version of a player who is already in your ranks.

Rajat Patidar has been on the circuit since 2015. Why would you need to scout him? Royal Challengers Bengaluru did - by way of having their scouts interview opposition coaches and captains, and match officials, to get a better sense of his captaincy credentials, which have been on show in the MPL and in games for his state, Madhya Pradesh. Wasim Jaffer pointed this out on ESPNcricinfo's Time Out show. It felt like it was the result of intense scouting enabling a well-informed decision that led to Patidar being handed the RCB captaincy.

Rathi, Ashwani Kumar, Vipraj Nigam and Zeeshan Ansari are all products of state-run leagues. Ansari, having played for India Under-19 in 2016 alongside the likes of Rishabh Pant and Ishan Kishan, found himself in the wilderness after turning out in just one T20 for Uttar Pradesh in 2019. He got his second wind when the UPT20 league came along and topped the wicket charts for the title-winning Meerut Mavericks in the tournament last year. (Nigam was the second-highest wicket-taker.)

The seasoned Karun Nair had a stellar Maharaja Trophy (formerly the Karnataka Premier League) campaign for title winners Mysuru Warriors, and finished as the leading run-getter. His resurgence began from there, and since then he has been splendid for his adopted state, Vidarbha, who went on to win the Ranji Trophy, and reach the Vijay Hazare Trophy final and the quarter-final of the SMAT.

Let's go back to the TNPL. A completely unknown player called Hunny Saini was bought for Rs 11.7 lakh (about US$ 14,000) at the auction earlier this year by Dindigul Dragons, the defending champions, who are captained by R Ashwin. Saini was the sixth-highest-paid player, ahead of Swapnil Singh, who has played multiple seasons of the IPL for three franchises.

Saini, who plays fourth-division cricket in Tamil Nadu, hails from Haryana and played all his junior cricket for that state before relocating to Chennai to pursue his cricketing career. TNPL scouts began to take notice of his talent and multiple teams in the league called him for trials, which led to a bit of a bidding war.

The TNPL teams also have a scouting network, where Ashwin, for one, has a free hand to hold trials based on the information he receives from his scouts at inter-district competitions and club games. He says all of these players have been in a camp for almost three months now, preparing for this year's TNPL, starting June 5, all at the cost of the franchise. This requires a serious financial allocation by the franchise.

That brings us to the financial aspect. Many top T20 leagues internationally run on the IPL's revenue model, where there is a common revenue pool, which is divided between the national board and the franchises. This will not work in a state T20 league. The broadcast rights will never be sold at a high price, and that makes the revenue pool small.

The only reason most leagues are broadcast is fantasy cricket, and the attention the fantasy cricket community directs their way. A TNPL or a Maharaja Trophy will secure more attention from broadcasters because they feature multiple international and IPL players, but, say, a Kerala Premier league will not warrant that kind of attention. (And yet, it has produced a Vignesh Puthur.)

The TNPL was among the first leagues to realise that, and they have done away with the IPL-based model: no franchise fee is collected every year from the franchises, and there is no revenue sharing from the collective pool. Instead, the money the franchise makes from jersey sponsorship and other sponsors is theirs to keep.

The DPL in its inaugural year set a reserve price of Rs 8 crores (close to $100,000) per year for the purchase of a franchise for a five-year term. This means shelling out a minimum of Rs 40 crores (about $4.8m) for a five-year term. Add to that the salaries of players and support staff, training expenses, transport and hotel costs, and other miscellaneous costs.

The current business model makes it difficult for a franchise to break even, which is why most leagues around the country are stop-start and changes of franchise ownership are frequent. If I were to take a punt, I'd say we are going to see some such changes in the DPL very soon. It is unsustainable to operate the way the state leagues are operating currently. The Mumbai Cricket Association, which outsourced the running of its T20 Mumbai League to a third-party event management company last time around, is now mulling taking back the running of the league.

State-run leagues have proved to be efficient talent pools for multiple IPL teams, but these leagues' future is not exactly rosy. Most franchise owners aren't recovering their money, and this can sometimes create potential for malpractice, by way of various forms of betting and fixing - since the games are broadcast. To protect against that, the BCCI has set guidelines for state associations to follow, an anti-corruption official is appointed for each league, and there are supposed to be secure PMOAs (player and match officials areas) at venues.

The fact remains that there is only so much money a state-run league can make. This needs to change or the ecosystem will likely collapse. Franchise owners need to be compensated for investing in and grooming young talent. For a tournament that runs for three weeks or less, which is the usual duration of a typical state-run league, they scout, recruit and provide opportunities for young players across the state, in the hope those cricketers become superstars. But the leagues have no monetary gain for doing this.

The emergence of state-run leagues as feeders for the IPL must be taken seriously. IPL franchises have enough money to buy teams in leagues around the world - in South Africa, the UAE, the CPL, MLC, and now the Hundred. True, these are attractive investment options compared to state leagues in India. But bear in mind that the demand for Indian players in the IPL has risen since the Impact Player rule was introduced in 2023: 1219 caps were handed out to Indian players in IPL 2024, up from 1178 in 2023. The percentage of Indian players used in IPL playing XIs rose from 64.7% in 2023 to 66.6% in 2024, and it was 67.7% in 2025 (at the time the tournament was interrupted in May).

The BCCI shares 70% of IPL broadcast revenue with state associations. This ought to give the associations enough money to develop infrastructure, set up academies, and ensure the smooth conduct of various senior and junior men's and women's tournaments. The state ecosystem at large is profitable, thanks to the money that comes in from the central board. But not the state T20 leagues - where the franchises have no real incentive to continue providing growth and opportunities for players while making losses. It makes sense for IPL franchises to invest in a few state-run leagues to ensure a steady supply of homegrown cricketers.

State-run leagues now form an integral part of the ecosystem that breathes life into the IPL, and we need to protect them. None of these leagues will grow exponentially, like the way IPL has. It's more about finding ways to run them sustainably in a smooth and efficient manner, providing opportunities for players in the state.

Arya was given a platform and so was Rathi. No one had heard of Puthur when he took three wickets against CSK on IPL debut. If it weren't for these leagues, it's likely these players would not have made it to the IPL. Add to them cricketers who were lost in the domestic structure, like Karun Nair and Zeeshan Ansari, who got a new lease of life thanks to these tournaments.

The well streamlined production line for Indian cricket's talent pool has a glitch in it that must be sorted out soon. The state T20 leagues need to be nurtured; they are a vital part of the supply chain for India's T20 structure.