In 2020, the Indian Premier League (IPL) introduced a football-like mid-season transfer
When the Indian Premier League (IPL) was inaugurated in 2008, nobody expected it to become one of the biggest sporting leagues in the world despite being a domestic league. Not to forget, cricket is not even followed in most countries, but the IPL, be it in terms of viewership or revenue collection, has competed with other European football leagues and even the NBA.
This happened because the IPL has always tried to find various ways to make the league more flamboyant and competitive. In 2020, the IPL introduced mid-season transfers like football leagues.
The idea was simple: Teams that felt they were struggling in the middle of the season had the option to swap or trade existing players with players from other teams.
Given there were 14 matches for each team to be played in the robin stage, the mid-season transfer started after all the teams played the first seven games.
Players who had played less than two games were eligible to participate in the mid-season transfer with mutual consent between the players and the teams.
The IPL committee hoped that the mid-season transfer would make the tournament more interesting and competitive, like football leagues. However, that wasn’t the case because the IPL runs for only 2-3 months, and there are less than 15 games to be played in the robin stage.
Not to forget, IPL is decided by the finest of margins, and therefore, teams simply did not like the idea of tinkering with the setup irrespective of win or loss. For example, let’s say player A of team 1 spent his time on the bench.
However, if he was loaned out and suddenly started playing well for another team, it would’ve caused a problem for Team 1. And there was no guarantee that the player who would’ve replaced player A in team 1 would be an improvement.
Another major problem was the contract. The player who would go into the mid-season transfer, if other teams did not pick them, had no option to go back to their original team, and their contract would go invalid. In short, along with less playing time, they would also lose money.
Overall, mid-season transfers for a short league like the IPL weren’t simply a great idea. Had the IPL been a year-long tournament like the EPL, La Liga, or other football leagues, the process would’ve worked for the teams as well as the players.
With very little activity and minimal impact, the mid-season transfer rule was phased out of the tournament, and to be honest, nobody batted an eye. In fact, most fans do not even remember that such a rule was once introduced in the IPL.
However, kudos to those who introduced such an idea. After all, IPL has always tried to bring something new to the table. On some occasions, ideas work, whereas in a few cases, they don’t. Nonetheless, the effort to make the tournament better is why IPL has reached such a great stature.
