Royal Challengers Bengaluru's batting coach and mentor Dinesh Karthik has shared his perspective on the Impact Player rule, advocating for structural stability by keeping the playing conditions until the end of the current IPL cycle (up to 2027 season) to avoid disrupting team planning.
However, Karthik acknowledged the widespread cricket community concern that the rule diminishes the development of Indian all-rounders, as teams can simply substitute a specialist batter for a specialist bowler (or vice-versa).
Introduced in 2023, the contentious Impact Player rule remains a subject of ongoing review by the BCCI and franchise stakeholders, though it has been part of the 2025-2027 cycle regulations.
"When it first came on (the Impact Player rule), it was very good because there were high-scoring games and a lot of teams were almost chasing those totals down. But strangely, this last season, there were not too many close games.
"It just felt like one team scored a lot, and the other team ended up chasing it down. And if you look at how the Impact Player rule has impacted the IPL, it was quite positive at the start. But slowly and steadily, it started losing the charm and the reason why it was there," Karthik told Cricbuzz.
He went on to highlight the rule had significantly hampered the development of Indian all-rounders over the last four seasons.
"It helped make the game more high-scoring than it was. But it definitely decreased the chances of India, as a cricketing country, producing all-rounders," he stated, before explaining why the rule should stay in place for this cycle.
"But what I wouldn't want is for it to be scrapped this season because teams have been picked with the Impact Player rule in mind. So it makes a lot of sense.
"When you pick a team, you're picking a team based on 12 players that you're going to use. Now, suddenly, if you make it 11, there could be a team which is not as strong as a 12-player unit but much better as an 11-player one, and that creates an unfair advantage. It is something they could do away with after the end of this season.
"But in general, I do feel it was quite good at the start, but right now it's losing the relevance and importance that it probably provided for the fans and the players as well," Karthik remarked.
Karthik maintained that any new rule should be introduced at the start of a cycle and abolish only after that cycle ends.
"But I just feel that, as a rule, whatever new rule you want to bring in, you need to bring it in at the start of a cycle and do away with it at the end of a cycle if you don't want to continue with it. First of all, this Impact Player rule was brought in midway through a cycle, and then to do away with it in the middle of another one, I don't think makes sense. That's all I would say," he concluded.
