Is this why IPL teams are struggling at home?

Rajasthan Royals (RR) head coach Rahul Dravid on Wednesday cited cases of players joining new franchises and consequent lack of familiarity with the conditions as a plausible reason for teams complaining about the lack of home advantage in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL).

Several teams such as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had expressed unhappiness about the nature of pitches at their respective home venues.

“I think it depends from ground to ground really. I'm not really sure what specific franchises might have wanted from their curators, so to speak, but home advantage, generally, the teams are new as well right after a big auction,” Dravid said on the eve of RR's away match against RCB.

Dravid then validated his arguments by giving the examples of players like RR's Nitish Rana and RCB's Phil Salt, who joined those teams after last year's mega auction.

“It's the first year after a big auction, so for a lot of the players as well, even though they may be your home players, they are playing for those teams or those grounds for the first time. For example, in the case of say, at RCB, someone like Phil Salt was at KKR and he's coming here for the first time,

“I'm just using him as an example. We have players in our team, for example, someone like Nitish Rana (KKR) was not with us and he's playing for us this year, so for him, Jaipur is actually kind of a new ground.”

The former Indian skipper said the new set of players will get more acclimatised to the conditions as the season progresses.

“So, I think that when you just have a big auction and there's a change of squad, the home advantage may not be that significant. But maybe as you go later on into the cycle, maybe you might start seeing their significance a little bit more because then your players get to practice and play a little bit more.
“So, maybe, that could be a factor as well, that some teams are sort of home advantage is not that prevalent this time,” he added.