Former Indian cricket star Sunil Gavaskar has weighed in on the current trend of big money being showered on uncapped players in the IPL without them having proven themselves in domestic cricket.
He wrote in his column for Sportstar that he could not understand why so many of these players earn millions, when most have done hardly anything to justify it.
The recently concluded IPL season 2025 saw RCB win for the very first time. This year had many uncapped players like Shashank Singh and Suyash Sharma steal the limelight. But Gavaskar’s issue with these players is mostly because he feels that they are putting this franchise league above everything else.
In his column, he pointed out that although some franchises like to take a chance on youngsters, quite often it seems like luck plays a bigger role than actual ability: “The argument that it is market forces just does not hold up. Often it is just good fortune that leads some franchises to gamble on young talent. Look at the uncapped players who have made millions in the IPL; very few have done much for India. It was just luck that got them those huge contracts.”
Gavaskar also named Rasikh Dar and Nehal Wadhera as players who have received big IPL contracts without really making an impact in the higher echelons of Indian domestic cricket. He is uneasy with the idea of players masking their injuries or choosing not to compete in domestic events such as the Ranji Trophy just to stay fit for IPL.
He explained that the BCCI, although having already raised match fees, should consider yet another step of instituting a pay scale which is directly linked to the number of matches a player participates in if they want to make that extra bit of help. This might mean more players could choose to actually play the Ranji Trophy rather than take off with an injury just before the IPL starts. He feels that the BCCI must also consider increasing payments for home players and provide additional incentives to teams that reach the knockout stages of domestic tournaments.
