IPL 2025 | Pitched battle: Should teams get home advantage?

Bengaluru: This is an age-old debate. One which two people may never see eye-to-eye on, but it’s one which needs to be spoken of nevertheless because it has far greater implications. 

Home advantage. 

The term seems natural, almost inevitable because that’s what you ‘should’ enjoy when you’re home. Home, after all, is where the heart is. 

Turns out, though, the last few IPL seasons haven’t been too kind to those who buy into that adage. This season too ‘homecomings’ are becoming an anxiety-inducing experience for a few franchises. 

And no, this isn’t because the crowds don’t get behind them or because they aren’t familiar with the conditions. This phenomenon is purely because the franchises are of the opinion that the curators, neutral or otherwise, have not been able to cater to their strengths by providing them with conducive pitches. 

The three teams who have openly lashed out (through their support staff) are Kolkata Knight Riders, Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. 

Before we get into what they’re saying, in what tone, and what it means, let’s begin understanding with what constitutes a good T20 surface. 

Typically, they are flat tracks where batters can stick their front foot forward and hit through the line, knowing well that there is little or no chance for deviation from and off the surface. 

You also have the franchises who want curators to prepare turners or seam-friendly strips to help the franchise capitalise on bowling resources which they have strategically stitched together during the auctions. 

The idea is to exploit home conditions to your advantage, and there is nothing wrong in wanting the odds to favour you when the stakes are this high. 

It’s not uncommon at the international level for curators to get a dictum from the home side and curate the pitch in accordance. So, why can’t the same rationale prevail for a domestic T20 tournament?

That’s, presumably, what the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Zaheer Khan and more recently Dinesh Karthik are unhappy about because they feel that they’re unable to get that edge at home. 

That said, franchises don’t get to demand the kind of pitch they want. This is as per the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s guidelines. 

Persuading curators rather than issuing dictums might work better when it comes to getting the job done. Then again, it’s the IPL. Everyone is on the edge. 

“It was a bit sticky, the pitch,” said RCB batting coach Dinesh Karthik. “They were struggling too. Definitely, this is not a pitch that's helping the batters too much. It's a challenging pitch. So that has been the case so far in both the games that we have played.

“The way T20 cricket is, the more runs there are, the better it is for the broadcaster, the better it is for the fans. They all like to see boundaries,” he said. “But, in the first two games, we have asked for good pitches. But it's turned out in this way where it's been challenging to bat on, for sure. So we try and do the best with whatever we get. That's how the game goes. We will obviously have a chat with him. And we trust him to do his job.”

When informed of Karthik’s take, a Karnataka State Cricket Association official laced up his boxing gloves. 

“The curator here is an award-winning curator and he has not changed the way he prepares the pitch for nearly a decade,” he says. “This pitch was a good pitch to bat on if batsmen applied themselves, see how KL (Rahul) did it. Most of them were just playing bad cricket and then they end up blaming curators because they can’t play on a surface which is less than perfect."

Even if harsh, there is some validity to that question. But, the quality of the batters is a topic for another day. This is about should home advantage be entertained or should more neutral playing conditions be employed. 

This is like trying to get an objective answer to a subjective question. Futile. But, the battle between the teams and curators is going to escalate before the former wins. The former always wins.