Team India and Rajasthan Royals spin-bowling all-rounder Ravi Ashwin makes a bold claim about the IPL, saying that he wonders if the IPL is cricket. Ashwin said this regarding the massive growth of the league.
Speaking on the Club Prairie Fire podcast, Ashwin told Michael Vaughan and Adam Gilchrist that he wonders sometimes if IPL is just cricket, as sometimes they even practice during the ad shoot.
Ashwin said, “As a youngster coming into the IPL, I was only looking to learn from the big stars; I did not think about how the IPL would look 10 years down the line. I can say that, having been in the IPL for so many seasons, the IPL is huge. Sometimes I wonder if IPL is even cricket, because sport takes a backseat during IPL. It’s so huge. We do end up practicing advertisement shoots and sets! That’s where the IPL has gotten to.”
Ashwin further revealed that no one saw that IPL would become this big, and adding to that, he revealed that Scott Styris once told him that IPL would not survive more than 2 to 4 years.
Ashwin said, “No one envisaged the kind of growth that the IPL has had. I still remember a conversation I had with Scott Styris when we were both at CSK. He told me that when he was playing for the Deccan Chargers in the initial seasons of the IPL, he did not think the IPL would last for more than two to three years. Initially, there was a big influx of money.”
