“It is a question that we have posed to the IPL a number of times, about the involvement of more (foreign) players on the field. I have personally mentioned that a number of times. Hopefully the IPL will look at that more seriously going forward into next season and beyond,” Buchanan said after the team’s sixth loss in eight games. “At the moment we have adopted a batting strategy, so that’s where our international effort is. That means guys who are international bowlers, be it Langeveldt, Mortaza, Mendis... whoever, their opportunities are limited,” he said.

Incidentally, other teams have had to leave players such as Glenn McGrath, David Warner, Paul Collingwood (all Delhi), Makhaya Ntini (Chennai) and Mark Boucher (Bangalore) in an attempt to strike the right balance — something that KKR have failed to do.

Even a look at the numbers would suggest that it’s the performance of the local players that has swung the balance in many cases — players such as Shadab Jakati, Abhishek Raut, Kamran Khan, Sudip Tyagi, Vikramjeet Mallick, Sunny Sohal, T Suman, Karan Goel and Sreevats Goswami.

After making a poor start to the season, Mahendra Singh Dhoni enjoyed brought in Tyagi, Murali Vijay and Jakati in place of Parthiv Patel, Joginder Sharma and Manpreet Gony, as the Chennai side managed to turn things around. Buchanan, on the other hand, surprisingly left Wriddhiman Saha — fairly successful last year — on the bench even as the team struggled to put bat to ball at the start.

“I think the teams in this competition will win only if the domestic players of the side will perform or if you have a strong local squad to choose from because at the end of the day, there will be seven Indian players playing in the side at a given time,” TA Sekar of Delhi Daredevils said. Mumbai’s assistant coach Praveen Amre too, at the start of the tournament, mentioned that “domestic players will need to chip in substantially to help the side win games. The limelight might be on the foreign players, but the focus will remain on domestic players.”