Mills hits right notes for IPL but what lies in store for rest?
Tim Wigmore casts his eye over the prospects of IPL franchises moving in for England’s players for this year’s T20 showpiece
For many of England’s cricketers, the Twenty20 international series in India took on the feel of an extended chance to flaunt their skills ahead of the Indian Premier League auction later this month.
None took that chance better than Tymal Mills. As a left-arm pace bowler who swings the new ball and has canny variations at the death, Mills is well-placed to attract IPL franchises, who might even imagine he can replicate the effectiveness of Mitchell Starc. So when Mills snared Yuvraj Singh with a wicked slower ball in the final T20I at Bangalore, a delivery that so flummoxed Yuvraj that it looped off the back of his bat to Jos Buttler, it was opportune timing indeed.
The word in India is that several franchises – notably the Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders – are enamoured with Mills, impressed not just by his pace and plethora of slower balls, but also by his evident relish for the big stage. It is sometimes joked that Mills bowls 5mph faster on TV – including when he bowled Chris Gayle with a 93mph leg-stump yorker for Sussex on Sky Sports last summer – and there have been glimpses of that sense of showmanship in India.
When it comes to foreign players, the task of IPL franchises is a little more complicated than simply signing the best players. Rather, it is in signing the players who are most superior to the local Indian players who could otherwise occupy that role. This is why franchises have been reluctant to sign foreign spinners, with even Samuel Badree, for long ranked the number one T20I bowler in the globe, barely making it onto the field. The rationale is that Badree might be better than an Indian spinner who could take his place, but he is not so much better: Badree might bowl his overs for, say eight runs fewer than an equivalent who would be a non-overseas player, but the difference in the quality between an overseas fast bowler and Indian quick is likely to be greater. Indian bowlers capable of bowling 90mph are rare, and left-armers capable of doing so might even be non-existent. All of which bodes extremely well for Mills. For all the unpredictability of the IPL auction, a well-placed source says that he can envisage a bidding war for Mills, and him ultimately fetching a price of several hundred thousand pounds.
Mills has another great advantage to IPL franchises: he would be available for the entire season, because he does not play ODI cricket and so is not in England’s Champions Trophy plans, as much as they might like him to be. And after playing in domestic T20 leagues in Bangladesh, New Zealand and Australia already this winter, with the Pakistan Super League next, Mills has showcased his fitness while developing his T20 know-how. Over a 14-game season, a franchise could also rest him for several games, picking the most opportune occasions, based on the conditions and opponents, to deploy Mills. His novelty could make him a particularly potent weapon against Indian batsmen who are not involved in the national squad, and might not have seen much of his ilk before.
Mills’ partner opening the bowling and at the death, Chris Jordan, also seems set to be available for the entire tournament. He has IPL history too, and performed well for Royal Challengers Bangalore last season; indeed, the team went from being at risk of missing out on the play-offs to reaching the final after he joined, with his death bowling a crucial part. It was through little fault of his own that Jordan was not retained: Bangalore had Starc, perhaps the best fast bowler in T20 cricket in the world, returning from injury and favour two overseas batsmen alongside all-rounder Shane Watson.
Jordan still has good prospects of being picked up by a side, not just for his prowess bowling wide yorkers, but also for his electric fielding and ability to hit sixes.Yet, though he bowled terrifically in the opening two T20Is, he will be ruing conceding 56 runs on the return to the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Had his series been the other way around Jordan would have little to fear. But because human beings tend to give disproportionate importance to what has just happened when making evaluations – the peak-end rule, as Daniel Kahneman calls it in Thinking, Fast and Slow – the memory of Jordan’s underwhelming performance in Bangalore, and the 40 runs he leaked off the final two overs, could linger in the minds of franchises come the auction.
The attractiveness of the rest of England’s squad is undermined by international commitments; even if players get special dispensation to miss the two ODIs against Ireland, on May 5 and 7, they will still be required to report for a pre-Champions Trophy training camp on May 15. That will mean they miss the play-off stages of the tournament, badly disrupting team plans. Indeed, Virat Kohli does not believe that players are a worthwhile investment if they cannot play in the climax of the season.
Yet even unavailability for the denouement of the IPL campaign is unlikely to stop franchises coveting Ben Stokes. His appeal is obvious: in the IPL he could be considered a genuine frontline batsman, capable of batting at number four, as well as regularly bowling four overs – his tendency to be expensive notwithstanding – and being dynamic in the field.
Another player singled out by Trevor Bayliss as being particularly attractive to franchises is Jason Roy, who can make even the largest Indian outfields look puny. Roy has got permission from Surrey to go to the competition, but is undermined by not being around for the knockout stages. Perhaps his best opportunity to win a contract is with the Mumbai Indians. One of their openers, Rohit Sharma, is an injury concern for the early weeks of the season, so Roy could slot in seamlessly without disrupting the team balance when he had to return to England.
Yet ultimately all those who are in England’s ODI plans are made significantly less attractive by not just the requirement to return to England on May 15, but also the uncertainty over exactly who will be selected for the Ireland ODIs; those who are would have to return to England around May 1. The ECB will not reveal who falls in which category until after the auction. The risk is that, rather than have their plans
The word in India is that several franchises are enamoured with Mills, impressed with his pace but also his evident relish for the big stage
messed around, franchises will sooner leave the English alone altogether, perhaps Stokes apart. And that would create one particularly peculiar dynamic: England’s T20 players who are not also part of their ODI plans – Mills and Jordan – will be more attractive to franchises than those who are in both squads.
If T20I specialists now stand to earn more a year than those picked in ODIs too, England, and international cricket more generally, are stacking up trouble for the future.