Rahul Dravid, the legendary Indian cricketer and former head coach of the national team, shared his thoughts on the Impact Player rule in the IPL. During his time as the coach from 2021 to 2024, Rahul Dravid openly admitted that he wasn’t really a fan of this new rule. While he recognized that it brought some good changes to the game, he believed it posed challenges, especially when it came to developing all-rounders.
RR is going through a topsy-turvy phase in IPL 2025 with having won 2 matches out of 4. Their next challenge is against the Gujarat Titans (GT) on 9th April at the iconic Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. GT, on the other hand, have been quite unstoppable with 3 wins from 4 matches and the duo of Shubman Gill & Ashish Nehra look ominous with finding different match winners in every other game.
The Impact Player Rule in IPL
Introduced to the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the 2023 season, the Impact Player rule is all set to make a return during IPL 2024. The basic concept of the Impact Player in the IPL is to allow one substitute player per team to play an active part in matches with bat or ball. An Impact Player is distinctly different from the regular substitution rule in international cricket which allows a substitute fielder to replace an injured player on the field but they cannot bat or bowl in the match.
Though concussion subs in international cricket can bat and bowl, it’s an injury-forced substitution rather than a tactical one like the Impact Player rule. Here’s a closer look at the IPL’s Impact Player rule. The Impact Player rule in the IPL allows teams to name five substitute players in addition to their playing XI before a match.
After the match starts, captains of both teams can nominate any one of these five substitutes to replace one of the players in the starting XI during any of the natural breaks of the match. These include the start of an innings, at the end of an over, at the fall of a wicket or when a batter retires.
But if a bowling side brings on an Impact Player after the fall of a wicket or in the event of a batter retiring in the middle of an over, the incoming substitute cannot bowl the remaining balls of that over. However, the Impact Player can bowl his full quota of four overs irrespective of how many overs the player he is replacing has bowled before getting substituted.
The player in the starting XI who is replaced by the Impact Player can play no further part in the match. A team is allowed a maximum of one Impact Player substitute in a match.
There’s one caveat, however. If a team has named the maximum-allowed four overseas players in their starting XI, they can only bring on an Indian as their Impact Player. In case a team has named three or fewer overseas players in their starting XI, they can bring on another foreign recruit from the substitutes’ list as the Impact Player.
Impact Players and their roles in IPL
On March 31, 2023, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) youngster Tushar Deshpande became the first Impact Player in IPL history after replacing Ambati Rayudu in the IPL 2023 season-opener against Gujarat Titans at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Frequent use of Impact Players in IPL 2023 also showcased the team’s willingness to adapt the rule into a tactical advantage for themselves in matches. CSK, the eventual champions, made good use of the rule. Kolkata Knight Riders’ Venkatesh Iyer and Rajasthan Royals’ Dhruv Jurel also shone as Impact Players in IPL 2023.
The rule opens up an array of strategic options and tactical possibilities for teams to exploit and has added a new dimension to the IPL as a whole. The Impact Player rule, however, is still in its nascent stages and only time will tell if teams want to keep using it. Ricky Ponting has never been a strong advocate of the Impact Player and the debate gained momentum after Rohit Sharma in a recent YouTube podcast said that he is not a “fan of the rule” as it hurts development of Indian all-rounders. Now Rahul Dravid has openly shared his views on the same.
Former Indian and now Rajasthan Royals coach Rahul Dravid shares his disappointment over the Impact Player Rule
Rajasthan Royals (RR) head coach Rahul Dravid has said that he is not a fan of the Impact Player rule in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The 52-year-old said that while the rule made matches more competitive, it hampered the development of all-rounders in cricket.
Rahul Dravid added that the introduction of the Impact Player rule has made things difficult from the perspective of the national team. In an interview with Sportstar, the former India head coach Rahul Dravid said:
“I’ll be honest: when I was India’s coach, I wasn’t particularly fond of the Impact Player rule. Not because it doesn’t make the game more competitive — it certainly does. It adds complexity and keeps matches alive till the very end. But from a national team perspective, it posed some challenges.”
“As a coach, you want to develop all-rounders, and under the old 11 vs 11 format, certain players would have had more opportunities to bat or bowl in different situations. The Impact Player rule has changed that to some extent,” Rahul Dravid added.
The 52-year-old said that the Impact Player rule had led to a rise in scoring rates. He felt that the introduction of the rule had helped teams stay in the game for a lot longer than before.
“Statistically, scoring rates have increased due to teams having an extra specialist batter. This means no team is ever truly out of a game. You can have a batter at No.8 or even No.9, which allows for aggressive hitting even after losing six or seven wickets,” he continued
Rahul Dravid was only the latest personality from the cricketing world to voice his opinion against the Impact Player rule. Australian all-rounder Marcus Stoinis had recently called for the removal of the rule from the IPL, as he, too, felt it was not helping Indian cricket.
“I think they should move on from it — unless it’s going to be introduced in international cricket. Otherwise, it doesn’t serve much purpose, especially for Indian cricket. I would love to see the rule scrapped. I actually thought it would be this year,” Stoinis said to the aforementioned report.
The Impact Player rule was introduced in IPL 2023 to make the contest more interesting. It permits teams to replace a player from the playing XI at any point of an innings in a match.
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