Why IPL franchises pay huge money for lesser-known spinners if they lack faith in them, asks Aakash Chopra

There have been instances in the Indian Premier League (IPL) where teams have been found buying lesser-known players for extremely high prices and then not showing enough faith in them after ordinary shows in the tournament. Former India opener and IPL player Aakash Chopra has questioned the franchises’ approach on this and suspected they lacked patience with the new players. Why pay such huge money if the franchises’ lack faith in such players, he asked.

Chopra’s target was Varun Chakravarthy, a mystery-spinner from Karnataka with just one first-class game under his belt, who was bought for a whopping Rs 8.4 crore by Kings XI Punjab for Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019. The 27-year-old leg-break bowler, dubbed as a mystery bowler, made his debut against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Eden Gardens earlier this week and had the worse of starts. He was hit around the park for 25 runs in his first over by KKR’s Sunil Narine and ended up with conceding 35 runs from three overs (10 off the last two were a better check, one must say) and took the wicket of Kolkata’s highest scorer in the match, Nitish Rana.

However, despite KXIP skipper Ravi Ashwin saying he was excited to have spinners like Varun in his team and was looking forward to learning some tricks from him, Punjab did not pick the 27-year-old newcomer for their next game against Mumbai Indians in Mohali on Saturday which they won by 8 wickets. Chopra was not impressed with such handling of Varun.

Chopra cites the example of KC Cariappa of KKR

In a tweet, he raised the issue of franchises handling the lesser-known players that they buy for big money but not making them play enough. He also cited the example of KC Cariappa, another young spinner that the KKR had bought a few seasons before for Rs 2.4 crore even though he was yet to play in a first-class or List ‘A’ game (he is yet to play one even today).

It was in the 2015 season when Cariappa made his debut for KKR but conceding 28 runs from two overs against a powerful batting line-up of Royal Challengers Bangalore saw the then captain Gautam Gambhir removing from the attack and that was it for the newcomer that season. He played nine more games in the 2016 and 2017 seasons but could get only seven wickets.

Here is Chopra’s tweet

The problem with picking lesser known Indian Mystery spinners is the lack of patience teams have with them. #KKR did that with Cariappa. #KXIP doing the same with Varun. Why pay mega bucks if you don’t have faith??? #KXIPvMI #IPL

— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) March 30, 2019

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