'Cricket is played by 11 players, not 12'

India captain Rohit Sharma has said that he is not a big fan of the Impact Player Rule in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Speaking on the Club Prairie Podcast ahead of Mumbai's match against Punjab, the former MI captain has said that the substitution rule has the potential to halt the development of all-rounders in at the top tier of Indian cricket, report agencies.

The IPL adopted the Impact Player Rule from the Big Bash League in 2023. Before the implementation at the top tier, the rule was tested in the domestic circuit in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in 2022. Since then, the IPL teams have effectively used the rule to substitute in a specialist bowler or a batter depending on the conditions of the game.

According to the law, teams can change one player in the middle of the game to suit the conditions of the match and the ground better to their favour.

India captain Rohit Sharma spoke in detail about the effect of the rule on Indian cricket and expressed he was worried about the development of Indian all-rounders.

"I generally feel that it is going to hold back [development of allrounders] because eventually cricket is played by 11 players, not 12 players," Rohit said on the Club Prairie Podcast.

"I'm not a big fan of impact player. You are taking out so much from the game just to make it little entertainment for the people around. But if you look [at] genuinely just cricketing aspect of itâ€æ. I can give you so many examples - guys like Washington Sundar, Shivam Dube are not getting to bowl, which for us [India team] is not a good thing.I don't know what you can do about it, but I'm not a fan of it honestly speaking," he said.

Rohit, however, understood the argument of the entertainment value that the rule brought in, in the Indian Premier League. The India captain said that with the Impact Player Rule, teams have a chance to dominate the game if they read conditions well early in the game.

"Because there's obviously 12 players for you to select from and whoever that impact player is, you can see how the game is going and change it later depending on what you need, what pitch is behaving. If you bat well, if you don't lose wickets, you can add another bowler so it gives you an option of having six or seven bowlers. You don't need that extra batter because a lot of the teams actually upfront are batting well, and then you hardly see Nos. 7 or 8 coming to bat," Rohit concluded.