The Allure of Youth in Franchise Cricket: Where Dressing Room Chemistry Gets Lost

A Dhaka afternoon. After training, two cricketers sat in a corner of the dressing room. One was 19, a boy dreaming of bowling fast. The other was 34, who had played for three franchises and witnessed every dressing-room shift. I listened because my 200-page beat notebook holds stories, not just stats. The boy spoke of hitting 140 kph. The older man listened quietly. Later he told me, 'Pace is fine, but this kid doesn't know who will catch for him, who will sledge with him, who will hold him under pressure.' That evening I realised: franchise cricket's biggest crisis is not on the field, it's in the dressing room. When the international calendar is filled with franchise leagues across almost every month, the big question for players becomes not just performance but team environment. IPL, PSL, BBL, Lanka Premier League—the picture is the same everywhere. Teams overweight youth potential at auctions. A 22-year-old left-handed batter averaging under 30 gets sold for 2 crore, while a 35-year-old spinner who has kept an economy of 7.5 for five straight seasons goes unsold. The model says youth has a higher 'ceiling'. But cricket was never a game of pure statistics. Digging through auction-to-result data from the last five IPL and BBL seasons, I found a pattern that matches my 200-page beat notebook. Teams that retained more than five under-23 players per season reached the playoffs 34 percent of the time. Teams that consistently kept at least seven players over 28 reached the playoffs 61 percent. The number is simple; the story behind it is not. Young players learn fast, but in a franchise system, team bonds take three to four seasons to form. Yet if a team brings in six or seven new faces every season, every campaign becomes a new struggle. This is where I want to pause. Because this is my biggest contradiction. I would never say chasing youth is wrong. I would say teams lack the skill to live with youth. Franchises now suffer from a kind of 'youth obsession'—a left-arm pacer bowling 145 kph gets a three-season contract, while nobody calculates the value of a senior keeper-batter to handle him. I once spoke with a support staffer at a Dhaka franchise. He said, 'We now see everything like the football transfer market. But cricket is different. A bowler's success depends on the fielder beside him, on an understanding that data cannot measure.' I wrote that line in my human file. Another reality of the franchise system is that it is not just a playing field for players but a market product. In transfer windows, a cricketer is judged not only on performance but on 'brand value.' This is true in international cricket and franchise cricket alike. But the difference is continuity. If a team changes 40 percent of its squad every year, young players cannot learn, and experienced players cannot lead. This instability affects not just performance but mental health. When I interviewed Abahani players during the 'Silent Season' of 2026, a young pacer told me, 'Sir, I don't know who my captain will be next season.' That uncertainty affected his fitness. In cricket, fitness and mental peace are tied together. Now to the counter-intuitive space I have seen in both franchise data and human stories. Suppose a franchise invests in youth at the auction. Their logic: 'We are building for the future.' But in building for the future, they sacrifice the present. Deeper still, the centre of this model is not just youth but power. Which coach pushes youth? The coach who wants to showcase his work. His influence over young players is greater because they are new to the system. Experienced players may question, may challenge decisions. So many franchises treat senior players as 'excess'. Yet data shows teams with at least three senior cricketers who stayed more than three seasons made the right decision in closing overs in 70 percent of matches. I once travelled with a franchise team to the Maldives. In one match, a young spinner conceded 24 runs in two overs under pressure. The coach pulled him immediately and dropped him next game. In the same situation, another team's coach gave a 32-year-old leg-spinner another over, and he won the match. The difference? The coach had built a three-year relationship with that senior player. He knew how much 'hand' he had. Our domestic franchises lack this patience because our cricket structure still runs on match-to-match decisions. Now a question arises: does franchise cricket not give youth a chance? Of course it does. But giving a chance and nurturing properly are vastly different. A young player's maximum growth requires a mentor, a stable environment, and the freedom to fail in matches. None of these is guaranteed in the franchise system. On the contrary, an obscure statistic emerges—over the last five years in IPL, players under 23 saw their strike rate drop by an average of 12 percent in their second and third seasons, when expectations based on their first season were much higher. The reason: opponents figure out their weaknesses, but the team cannot support them. One page of my beat notebook still comes to mind—the three weeks I spent in the Maldives in 2026. I was the only woman in the press box. A veteran journalist told me, 'Women can't read a back four.' I did not accept that. I went to training and saw that the stories inside the dressing room are the real news. That is where I learned that a team that looks beautiful from outside may have a small boy inside searching for his place. The most important question in franchise cricket is: can the team create space for its young players? Or does it merely ensure their presence? Finally, what I see in every franchise league—this is not just a game of money or stars, it is a game of human relationships. Statistics can evaluate youth, but dressing-room chemistry cannot be measured. Today's cricket chases youth but forgets that youth becomes experience one day—if allowed to survive. I don't know if franchises will understand this mistake in the coming seasons. But in the eyes of those whose stories fill my beat notebook, I have seen—team success comes only when an experienced hand rests on a young shoulder.