The IPL's relentless pursuit of sameness risks talent becoming just another swipe in an endless feed

Runs have become the league’s answer to dopamine-inducing reels, and their ever-increasing, ever-consistent supply is slowly desensitising fans.

You tune into a random IPL game and, almost instantly, you’ll see something spectacular. Abhishek Sharma carving one inside-out over cover. A 15-year-old launching a length ball over mid-wicket. Tim David pulling one over the roof of Chinnaswamy. Shreyas Iyer sending one hurtling towards the commentary box.

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It is a testament to how far batting has come. But it is also stripping away contrast. Every boundary begins to look like the last. Every match feels like a continuation of the previous one.

There are outliers on occasions, like Delhi Capitals being reduced to 8-6 by RCB, or the Super Over finish between LSG and KKR in a chase of 155. But they are far and few in between.

The IPL is still fun, but it’s somehow getting boring at the same time. There are structural reasons for this: the most significant being the standardisation of pitches across the country.

Dwindling identities and identical patterns

Through the 2010s, IPL venues carried distinct identities. Chennai Super Kings built an empire around the turning decks at Chepauk. They had an unmatched win/loss ratio of 2.666 at their home ground, losing only 15 out of 56 games in Chennai between IPL 2008-2019. The Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur used to be Rajasthan Royals’ fortress; they won each of their seven games there in 2008 and swept all eight games in 2013.

Mumbai Indians perfected their understanding of the Wankhede and won twice the number of matches they lost there between 2013 and 2020, their golden period. When teams visited the Eden Gardens, they expected low and slow tracks where the likes of Sunil Narine, Rajat Bhatia, and Piyush Chawla were difficult to negotiate.

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That identity has largely blurred into one now. Almost every IPL pitch resembles a table top curated for maximising boundaries and runs. “I think if we give fair wickets, the spectators will say it’s become boring because the T20 followers want entertainment. They want to see fours and sixes. That’s why the tournament is built like that,” Muthiah Muralidaran, SRH spin-bowling coach, said recently.

This concern, whether real or overstated, has seen teams lose out on their home advantage. CSK’s win/loss ratio in Chennai has gone down from 2.666 before 2020 to 1.083 after. In fact, no team has a win/loss ratio of greater than 1.333 at home this decade. The quest for higher scores across the board has effectively killed the concept of home advantage in the IPL.

Adding to this sameness is the rather even distribution of quality across teams. It’s supposed to be a feature, not a bug, signifying the growing domestic talent base in India and the presence of top international T20 stars. But what it also does is ensure that every team has the kind of firepower to play a 230 vs 230 game against the best sides even if they are going through a rough season. Case in point: Mumbai Indians putting up 243 on the board against SRH and still losing, a reminder that even extraordinary performances now exist within increasingly predictable patterns.

Even beyond conditions and team composition, the structure of the league itself contributes to the monotony. With the expansion from eight to 10 teams, the number of fixtures has naturally increased. Coupled with new T20 leagues sprawling up around the world and a T20 World Cup every two years, there’s too much short-form cricket that people are exposed to year-round. To add to that, the format of the IPL has not evolved to account for what happens when teams fall out of contention.

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Almost every season sees two or three sides drift away from the playoff race by the halfway mark. From that point on, a portion of the league phase is populated by matches involving teams with little riding on the outcome. And those games tend to follow familiar scripts: high-scoring contests played at full tilt, but with little to no stakes.

This is a function of a lack of jeopardy in the bottom half of the table. Without that, a section of the tournament begins to feel inconsequential, adding to the broader sense of sameness that now runs through the league.

How can the IPL move towards a more diverse structure?

Taken together, these shifts point towards a larger pattern.

The IPL has not lost its competitiveness or quality. If anything, both have improved. But in flattening conditions, equalising teams, and removing consequences for those who fall away, it has also reduced the contrast that once defined it. The cricket on display is no less skilful. But the matches are simply harder to distinguish.

One solution aimed at improving the tournament structure is to somehow introduce jeopardy for teams not in the hunt for a playoffs spot. There could be several ways of doing that, but the most obvious would be a two-tier system with relegation and promotion. That will almost certainly require more teams than 10. But further expansion might not be on the horizon anytime soon, meaning the IPL needs to find other practical ways to stop itself from becoming a repeat watch of the same match 74 times.

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If tournament-wide jeopardy might take years to increase, there’s a neat and much-supported solution for adding in-game jeopardy: removal of the Impact Player. Several captains and star Indian players have by now spoken out against it. While it might not have a significant impact directly on scoring rates as expected, it will make tactical mistakes costlier, which - contrary to what the decision-makers envisage - will make matches more ‘interesting’ to watch.

More immediately, a return to allowing teams to dictate their home conditions, rather than curating uniform batting surfaces, might be the simplest way to restore some of that lost contrast.

The IPL remains the most popular, talent-rich and competitive league in the world. The quality of cricket has never been higher. But in its pursuit of consistency - of surfaces, scoring, and spectacle - it has drifted towards homogeneity.

It is incumbent upon the IPL management to realise that it is variation and anticipation of not knowing what is to come that captivates in sport, not just excellence. Without that, even the most spectacular moments risk becoming just another swipe in an endless feed.

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