England’s white-ball captain Jos Buttler believes the Impact Player rule in the IPL has not been a detriment to the development of all-rounders as well. He considers all-rounders a necessity and not a luxury as well. However, the Impact Player rule allows any player in the playing XI to be replaced by another five Impact Subs at any time during the game as well.

In a recent interview with TOI, Buttler said, “I know in the IPL, people think the Impact Player rule is sort of taking something away from the all-rounders, but they still play a huge part. They’re crucial to balancing the side. Even before the Impact Player rule came in, there were a lot of cricketers wanting to be involved, wanting to impact the game with both bat and ball. All-rounders traditionally have been crucial for cricket teams, to lengthen the batting lineup, provide balance and different bowling options. All-rounders are not a luxury but a necessity. Having multi-skilled players is a huge benefit.”

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However, Jos Buttler has been occasionally used as an Impact Player by the Rajasthan Royals (RR) only during their batting innings over the past two seasons as well. Jos Buttler also said that having one head coach for all formats and split coaching have their share of advantages and disadvantages as well.

“There are pluses and minuses to both. Having that one guy across formats can have that consistent messaging, of course. At the time Brendon took over as Test coach along with Matthew Mott (former white-ball coach), the schedule for English cricket was incredibly busy. It looked impossible for one man to do it all. We had to balance that out,” Buttler said.

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“Now it’s obviously gone back to having that single head coach, but you’ll still have to be smart with schedules. There might be times when ‘Baz’ needs to step out for a series and one of the assistant coaches can take charge. There’s more data but making those calls on the field is still crucial. It’s such a short game, every ball is important, saving one run or two runs here and there can go a long way to winning a game. Making those calls as captain is vital. There’s just more information for the captain if you need it,” Jos Buttler concluded.