Kolkata Knight Riders' decision of letting Shreyas Iyer go into the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction pool was a bit of a miss, feels the former team director Joy Bhattacharjya. (Schedule | Teams | Points Table)
Iyer, who led KKR to their first IPL title in a decade in 2024, was released ahead of this season and Punjab Kings bought him in the auction. The 30-year-old is currently leading the Kings who have won both of their first couple of games in IPL 2025.
"I think they (KKR) did not look at how important he was," Bhattacharjya told 바카라 India in an exclusive interaction.
Iyer has not just led Punjab to the top of the table in the early stages of the league but is also in scintillating form with the bat. The 30-year-old was yet to be dismissed in the two times that he has batted and the right-hander has scored 149 runs at a strike rate of 207.
But Bhattacharjya, who had been associated with the franchise for a long time since the inception of the league, feels it is not just his batting that KKR overlooked.
"It is not just the performances of his on the field. It is the way he leads. He is a very successful captain and if you see his captaincy records in the last three four years. From DC reaching finals, to Mumbai, to wherever he has done well.
"Sometimes, we look at it and it does not seem that he is a big captain. 'No he has a good team and he is winning.' No, there has to be something special about him because his captaincy record is absolutely outstanding. So I think that might have been a bit of a miss."
But despite the Iyer miss, Bhattacharjya remains hopeful that his former team will do well this season.
He has also been vocal about the imbalance between batting and bowling in the IPL. He believes that the league needs to do away with the Impact Player rule and bowlers will make a comeback soon.
"I think we are going to see corrections (in scores) happening now. One thing that I have not liked is the Impact Player rule. I think it does not incentivising teams having all-rounders. I think that will go. And I feel in the next couple of years, the bowlers are going to get back and there will be a slight correction," he said.
"The truth is cricket can not afford to have 300-300 T20 matches on a consistent basis because the interest is there in sixes because it is a rare event. If it becomes too commonplace an event then the interest will not be there. It is like a Salman Khan movie. You can have five fight sequences but if you have 55 of them, perhaps you are killing the interest."
Bhattacharjya, who has seen the IPL right from its early days, has witnessed the unprecedented rise in the quality of uncapped players in the tournament in recent years. He explains that the audacity that we see in today's young players has come through the experience of sharing the dressing room with the elites of the game.
"At the start, they (uncapped players) did not have the experience," he says. "Today what happens in IPL is all the coaches and managers are much better at using players. And these players now have seen everybody in the nets and here and there. They are no longer scared."
"Before this, they used to be in awe of foreign players. When Ricky Ponting walked into the dressing rooms, the KKR Bengal players they looked at him in awe, like" 'who is this guy!', Bhattacharjya added.
"Now they are saying ill hit this guy for a six. You know Dale Steyn is bowling to him in nets. Tomorrow when he is playing for India and Dale Steyn is bowling to him in a Test match. He is thinking: Ok I have faced this guy in the nets. It is not something I have not seen. So now (this is) the level of preparation and fearlessness of these Indian batters."
Bhattacharjya, a man of many talents, can be consistently seen on cricket shows as expert. Interestingly, he was also the director for the 2017 U-17 FIFA World Cup that took place in India. He believes that the amount of young talent India is producing is so much that the team can play three different batting line-ups and a couple of bowling units as well.
"It is also a cultural thing. They (uncapped players) feel anyone is fair game and that is probably the finest part of IPL. The way it has evolved and the domestic players have evolved is absolutely outstanding. Bowling maybe a couple but in batting you could put three T20 batting units from India without worrying," he said.
Bhattacharjya believes that young bowlers will also reach the levels set by young uncapped batters, but for that to happen, they will need to be incentivized.
"Bowling will come; it will follow. It will depend on the kind of pitches we prepare and the incentives provided to bowlers. At one point, 140 km/h was something only a few international bowlers could achieve, but today, 140 is routinely bowled by at least 30 bowlers in India," he said.
