Australia's stars reduced to mere onlookers at IPL as cricket's new world order takes shape

Cooped up at home at the moment, watching more Indian Premier League than normal, I’ve been thinking for a while that this campaign seemed to just be more intense.

While previously it liked to think it was the world’s most important Twenty20 competition, this time the IPL actually felt like it – even to someone like me, who has been pretty cynical about the way it has irreversibly altered world cricket.

Yes, the dancing troupes were still there on the sidelines, but there was something about this campaign that showed the competition’s significance was changing.

It felt like it was finally sliding away from being a stage for the best international stars and billionaire franchise owners to show off their bling, and just becoming the real engine room of Indian short format cricket. Now, after the international headlines generated by 14-year-old batting prodigy Vaibhav Suryavanshi, IPL administrators and club bosses are going to feel even more important – and rightfully so.

But it has been watching the slow and steady demise of the Australian players (and a few other international big names) that has made me realise that the competition is so strong and our national heroes are really now just pawns in the game.

Not to say some of the Australians haven’t had their moments. Travis Head started the season brashly and was rewarded with some runs, Mitchell Marsh did some beautiful thumping of the ball (as we know he can) and Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc have both bowled well in stretches.

Meanwhile, other household cricketing names like Pat Cummins, Marcus Stoinis and Glenn Maxwell have looked miles off the pace.

But there’s also the issue of our highly-regarded young Australians and their poor performances. While locals like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhishek Sharma and Suryavanshi have all shone through in the end, Aussies like Jake Fraser-McGurk and Spencer Johnson have barely made any impact for their clubs.

And other fresh Antipodeans who may have achieved something of note (like Mitchell Owen) are plying their trade in the shadows of the PSL in Pakistan. You’d be forgiven for not even noticing that competition was running currently, so dominant is the IPL’s bandwidth.

Even if the Australians turn their form around, I’m not convinced that the likes of Fraser-McGurk and Johnson have the sort of fearless courage and T20 game tricks that seem to be working so well for the locals this IPL campaign.

Vaibhav Suryavanshi. (Photo by Pankaj Nangia/Getty Images)

Remember, Indian cricketers have had it feeding into their DNA since they were just kids. Look at how 34-year-old Mumbai Indians star Suryakumar Yadav (also known as SKY) continues to outsmart everyone, despite the fact that people know what is coming with his 360-degree game plan.

If you’ll humour me, I’ll give you the recent historical context, via a personal example. One of the highlights of my cricketing life was a cricket tour of India in 2008 for my German club team, Berlin CC.

It was a memorable trip in so many ways, playing teams in Bengalaru, Mumbai, Goa and Mysore. Yes, I wrote a book about it – you can find it out there somewhere – if you look hard enough.

This was right at the start of the IPL, back when it was competing with the Indian Cricket League, which eventually folded and died. The club teams we played against were mainly full of youngsters.

Their pressed white uniforms and lengthy pre-game warmups reeked of discipline, as they were marshalled around by old-fashioned coaches with bristling moustaches.

But when the matches got going, you could see that the players were split into two camps. There were the batting technicians, keen to bat all day in the heat and play with the iron will and straight bat of their hero Sachin Tendulkar. But there were also youngsters with no fear, who would skip up the pitch in the first over against an experienced opposing bowler and casually loft the ball over mid-off and mid-on.

For someone like me, who has played cricket at a pretty high level, I was incredulous. Having grown up in Sydney grade cricket, you just weren’t used to seeing that confidence from young players – unless the batter was maybe Michael Clarke.