“I will always be grateful for what the IPL gave me,” Kevin Pietersen tells Jos Buttler. “It gave me a lot of controversy, I earned a lot of money, but it also saved my career because I made trusting relationships that I was able to call upon to give longevity to my career.”
The conversation is on Buttler’s podcast, For The Love Of Cricket, released on Tuesday, with the pair hailing their experiences of playing in the Indian Premier League. (For the love of content, they also discuss Pietersen’s new career as a YouTuber.) The 45-year-old was there in the early years, rebelling against English cricket’s uneasy relationship with a revolutionary startup, exhilarated to call Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis his teammates.
“[The England and Wales Cricket Board] said: ‘You’re only allowed there for two weeks and then you’ve got to come back and play the Test matches,’” Pietersen says. “And that caused the biggest rift – that was the breakdown in my relationship with the ECB.”
Through Buttler you can see how much things have changed. The 35-year-old will play in the Hundred this year for Manchester Super Giants, one of the four IPL-affiliated teams welcomed into the English domestic competition. Buttler also plays for their SA20 side, Durban’s Super Giants. While Pietersen wrestled with his bosses to end up playing 36 IPL matches, Buttler is about to begin his 11th season in India having hit seven hundreds in 121 games for three teams. He is England’s greatest export to the tournament.
“You fought a lot of battles for the guys now,” Buttler tells Pietersen before an interjection. “You’re welcome.” In an odd aside Pietersen expresses his joy at the riches enjoyed by the modern player. “If you got paid $50m tomorrow to go and play cricket in Saudi Arabia, I’d be so happy for you.”
Buttler’s own battle at present is with form after his severe struggles at the T20 World Cup. A run of five single-figure scores was followed by a 17-ball 25 against India in England’s semi-final defeat, fluency evading him in a monster chase of 254. Questions have been raised about his international future, something to be expected at Buttler’s age, when a lean run prompts worries of a terminal decline.
He has said he wants to carry on, presumably hoping a couple months with Gujarat Titans is the healer before another English summer. He finished last season with an average touching 60 and a strike rate beyond 160, perched behind a dominant opening pair of Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan.
Tom Banton and Luke Wood are among his teammates this year, with 12 England players in India. An injury has ruled Sam Curran out of his stint with Rajasthan Royals, while Ben Duckett faces a ban from the tournament until 2029 for pulling out of his deal with Delhi Capitals to play in the County Championship and get Test-ready, a soothing line for the traditionalists.
Jordan Cox has been rewarded for leading the Hundred charts last year; the 25-year-old Essex batter, yet to play in the IPL, has joined Royal Challengers Bengaluru, the defending champions. David Payne, 35, could also make his first appearance after receiving a call-up as an injury replacement. The Gloucestershire quick, who won his sole one-day international England cap in 2022, is enjoying a late flourish on the franchise roadshow, having won the Big Bash and ILT20 in recent months. He has signed with Sunrisers Hyderabad alongside Brydon Carse and Liam Livingstone.
Sunrisers enter with the words of Sunil Gavaskar still ringing. In a column for the Mid-Day newspaper the former India captain wrote that the organisation’s decision to buy Pakistan’s Abrar Ahmed for its Leeds offshoot in the Hundred “indirectly contributes to the deaths of Indian soldiers and civilians”. He argued “there’s still time to undo the wrong”, setting up an uneasy wait for July, when the tournament begins.
It is a reminder of the political edges here, the hypertoxicity festering in India’s and Pakistan’s cricketing relationship too. Bangladesh find themselves in the mix: Mustafizur Rahman was removed from Kolkata Knight Riders’ squad in January, during escalating tensions with India, setting off his side’s boycott of the men’s T20 World Cup.
Away from those wranglings, there is the aftermath of tragedy to contend with. Sunrisers visit RCB for the season opener on Saturday at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, the venue outside which 11 people died last June in a crowd crush.
Thousands had gathered for a victory parade to celebrate RCB’s triumph in the IPL final, a long-awaited first. Authorities were overwhelmed by the numbers and the joyous images of the previous night – Virat Kohli being swarmed by his teammates after the final ball – were replaced by those of bodies being carried away, abandoned shoes and general chaos.
RCB’s own role in the parade was scrutinised, with the Karnataka state government – facing its own opposition attacks – arguing that the franchise, its events partner and the state cricket association “unilaterally decided to hold the victory celebration without prior consultation with the police and without obtaining the necessary permissions or licence for such celebration”.
Three months on from the crush, RCB announced it would offer 25 lakh (£20,000) to each of the grieving families. The figure jars when you consider the extraordinary sums that float around the IPL, including the £1.33bn RCB was sold for this week to a consortium featuring the private equity group Blackstone. Come Saturday, the only number on everyone’s mind at the Chinnaswamy should be 11.