His debut was a remarkable one where he came on as an impact player to bowl out Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson. The Gujarat franchise has smartly used him to substitute opening batsman Shubman Gill in IPL 2023 and fetched good results with the Afghani bowler taking eight wickets in five games. However, a team may select an overseas player to come on as the Impact Player if they start the match with three or fewer foreign players in their starting XI. In that case, the new foreign player from the bench will essentially be one of the four replacements announced during the toss.

Recent trends show that high team scores are often linked to well-timed substitutions. The batting team will have the luxury to introduce an Impact Player at the fall of a wicket or during the innings break. The Impact Player can bat or bowl his full quota once he has been introduced. If a player had retired hurt, the Impact Player can be used only at the end of the over in progress.

When can the Impact Player be brought in?

The player in the starting XI who is replaced by the Impact Player can play no further part in the match. Introduced in the IPL 2023 season, the Impact Player rule is all set to make a return during IPL 2025. 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. This rule allows the incoming player to bat and bowl, adding flexibility to the playing XI. It provides teams with an extra tactical option to respond to changing match conditions. Similarly, UP Warriorz have relied extensively on the domestic Indian batters, who have faced 314 deliveries, which is twice more than the next best - RCB (152).

Impact on Team Strategy and Game Dynamics

The Impact Player, however, cannot be used by teams as a workaround to the limit on the number of foreign players allowed in a match. If a team is already fielding four foreign players, then the impact player must be an Indian player. However, if a team has fewer than four foreign players, they can choose a foreigner as their impact player.

These factors push teams to balance risk and reward when employing the substitute player rule in IPL. "It's going to be 12 playing 12 because most teams will want their specialists to occupy their batting slots or their bowling slots," Sanjay Bangar, the head coach at Royal Challengers Bangalore franchise. While submitting the team sheets, the captains will be allowed to name five substitute players from which one can be called upon later.

It also has to be noted that the 'Impact Player' can be brought into the game before the start of the innings, or after an over is completed. Lewis, who has been a part of the tournament since its inaugural edition, is also of a similar view. But he believes the Indian cricket board has done well to tap in on the knowledge capital from other countries where women's cricket had taken an early lead in development.

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• If a player gets injured while fielding mid-over, he can no longer take part in the match if the team introduces Impact Player to replace him.
• The previous season of the IPL saw the introduction of the Impact Player rule.
• The IPL is all set to introduce the Impact Player rule in the tournament from the 2023 season.
• Last season, it was the existence of two new teams in Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans, one of whom even went on to win the league itself.
• CSK narrowly missed out on the playoffs last season, finishing fifth in IPL 2024 after losing their final league match.

The X-Factor rule, tried – and ditched – in the BBL in Australia, allowed teams to substitute a member of their starting XI at the halfway point (ten-over mark in a full game) of the first innings, if the player replaced hadn’t already batted or bowled more than one over. Klinger, however, is of the view that even beyond the commercial aspect of the tournament - which is the richest women's cricket league in the world and is the best-paying by a significant margin - WPL remains as relevant as any of the big leagues in the world. The primary reason for that, according to him, is the pressure that players get used to by playing in front of massive crowds, which they are unlikely to find anywhere else. At the three venues that his team has played at since the start of last season - Bengaluru, Delhi and Vadodara - the crowd turnout for the games have been anywhere in the range of 12,000 to 30,000. Following the footsteps of compatriot and Gujarat Titans’ star T20 bowler Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmad made quite an impression in the IPL last season.

The substitute player rule in IPL lets teams make one strategic replacement during a match. During the match, a captain can make the change at key moments such as after a wicket falls or at the end of an over. Despite the introduction of this rule, the Indian Premier League has been mindful of its core policy of allowing just four overseas players to participate in a match. Hence, a team can only select an Indian as the Impact Player if their starting XI includes four foreign players.

“Gotta give credit to him for encouraging millions of fans out there to watch the game of cricket and to be inspired. It's because of guys like him who have really carried the game well over a very long period of time. https://ipl-bet-online.com/ Touch wood, hopefully, it continues for a few more years to come,” De Villiers said. Because now we can see that a time is coming when Dhoni as a player will not be a part of that group,” Chopra said exclusively on JioHotstar. I used to watch Ricky Ponting’s batting videos where he would play the pull shot to get inspired.