Dale Steyn said that IPL is a league where price tag of a player takes precedence over everything else.
He further said that when he plays in the PSL or the Sri Lanka Premier League and other such leagues, he finds cricket being the focal point, whereas, in the IPL, the focus is more on how much money did one player earned in the auction, rather than how he performed.
He gave this as the reason for skipping the upcoming IPL 2021 after he was released by his franchise the Royal Challengers Bangalore after a poor IPL 2020.
“I wanted some time off. I found that playing in these other leagues was slightly more rewarding as a player. I think when you go to IPL, there are such big squads and so many big names and so much emphasis on maybe the amount of money players earn and everything like that, so sometimes, somewhere down the line, cricket gets forgotten,” said Steyn.
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“When you come to like a PSL or the Sri Lankan Premier League, for that matter, there is an importance on the cricket. I have only been here for a couple of days and I have had people in and out of my room, just wanting to know about where I have played and how I went about it.
Whereas, when I go to something like the IPL that gets forgotten and the main topic is how much money did you go for in this IPL? That’s just me being brutally honest. I wanted to stay away from that and really put more emphasis on playing and bringing good vibes to good cricket teams and tournaments I feel are worth it,” he added.
Though Dale Steyn might not have meant to demean the IPL, where has played for teams like Deccan Chargers, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Gujarat Lions, and Sunrisers Hyderabad, playing 95 IPL matches, picking up 97 wickets with a best of 3/8.; the Twitterverse reacted to his words quite sharply.
Here are the tweets: