Rahul Dravid, head coach of Rajasthan Royals, explained that the reason behind teams complaining about the lack of home advantage in this IPL could be due to players joining new franchises and consequent lack of familiarity with the conditions.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Chennai Super Kings, Lucknow Super Giants and Kolkata Knight Riders had expressed unhappiness about the nature of pitches at their respective home venues. But Dravid has a different point of view.

“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 match here against RCB.

Dravid strengthened his arguments by citing the examples of players like Nitish Rana and Phil Salt, who joined their respective 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.”

“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.

(With Pti inputs)

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