The debate around domestic cricket
For quite some time, I have been arguing in favour of India's top cricketers playing domestic cricket so that the level of competition helps young players coming through the system to mature (refer my previous blog posts). Thanks to IPL and relentless tours after tours throughout the year, India's top cricketers don't go back to domestic cricket, unless they are coming out of injury or have been dropped. IPL has become such a monolith that the BCCI had to face insult as players like Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer chose to ignore its directives and skipped the Ranji Trophy. Of late there has been a trend wherein once players have established themselves in the Indian team, they do not go back to their domestic teams. This trend is of recent vintage, particularly post the star syndrome brought about by IPL. Ishan Kishan is a classic case. He wasn't in the top league except for the absurdly astronomical auction amount that propelled into the limelight. Thus he was able to ge...