If It Happens, IPL 2020 Will Be The Best One Ever: Varun Aaron

India and Rajasthan Royals pacer Varun Aaron feels IPL 2020, if it happens, will be the best one ever because both players and fans will be ‘hungry’ for cricket.

“I feel us as cricketers we really need the IPL this year. You know we’ve been sitting around so long with no action; everyone is really hungry and it’ll be really good to have some high-intensity IPL action,” Aaron said during a Royals Podcast on Facebook with New Zealand spinner and Royals spin consultant Ish Sodhi.

“I think if the IPL happens this year it will be the best IPL ever, largely because everyone will be well-rested without a lot of the heavy international schedule behind them and they’re all going to be super hungry to do well.

“I also think the fans will be extremely hungry as well, they’ll probably be hungrier than us as they’ve not really been able to see any sporting activity for the past few months.

“Right now, we obviously don’t know if it’ll be behind closed doors or no, there are a lot of variables to it at the moment. I just feel the build-up and the hunger from both the fans and the cricketers are going to contribute to creating a massive spectacle.”

Talking about his career, Aaron, who has played nine Tests and nine ODIs, said Rahul Dravid was the toughest batsman he has bowled to.

“I would say Rahul Dravid is the toughest batsman I’ve ever bowled to. Every time I turned up to bowl to him in the nets, it felt like I was just bowling at 120kph. It’s just something that he does to you.

“I have never bowled to a batsman who would lunge out to the max and play you as if you’ve just bowled a throw down to him. As a bowler that’s extremely irritating to bowl to somebody like him.

“I think getting the Test cap for India is the highlight for any cricketer. No matter what one does after that, it is the highest point of his career.

“If you ask any of the greats, they will all say the highlight for them was getting the Test cap for India. I feel there’s nothing better than that and that’s for everyone.

“I received my Test cap from Laxman. I was lucky enough to play with the likes of Sachin, Dravid, Viru back then, I mean it was surreal. The most striking moment for me was stepping onto the bus on the first day of practise and walking by all these guys, having watched them growing up as a kid, it was really special to be part of that bus.”

One of the talking points of Aaron’s career was him striking ENgland pacer Stuart Broad on the nose with a fast bouncer in 2014.

“The ball before I hit Stuart Broad, he actually kind of top-edged it for a six. As a bowler, you never want to be hit for a six, especially by a lower-order batsman,” he recalled.

“So next ball I went over the wicket and decided to just let it rip and I absolutely gave everything I had on that ball. It hit him on his helmet, and initially, I realised that I couldn’t see the ball, and I was like “Oh no!”, the ball was stuck in his helmet.

“Then I went to him and saw blood dripping down from his helmet and felt really bad looking at that. At the end of the day you never want to hurt somebody. The first thing I did as soon as the innings got over was just rush to the English team’s dressing room to check on him.

“He had ice on him and had a broken nose, to be fair to him he turned for the next game with a face mask and played the whole game. Reflecting on it now, I feel it would’ve been better had that incident not happened, you never want to injure somebody that bad.”