The start of any IPL season sees old friendships rekindled and new relationships formed - particularly in the first year after a mega auction. All ten franchises have undergone major transformations and each dressing room will have already seen interactions between players and staff who have never previously crossed paths, let alone spoken to one another.
Those meetings are easier for some than others. For those who have been around the IPL for years and are fluent in several languages, fitting into a new environment is no issue. But for some, joining a team - or the league itself - for the first time may bring a sinking realisation that communicating over the following two months will be a major challenge.
"I wouldn't call it a language barrier; barrier isn't the right word. It's the beauty of this country," says Piyush Chawla, the second-highest wicket-taker in IPL history. "There are so many different languages - and even in Hindi, there are so many different accents or dialects." Chawla himself speaks Hindi and English, and can understand Punjabi and some Tamil.
India does not have a single national language: Hindi, the most widely spoken, is considered one of two official languages of the country's government alongside English, but there are 22 different "recognised languages" across the country. The IPL itself is beamed around the world in English, but the Indian broadcaster JioStar has feeds in 12 different languages, including the Bhojpuri and Haryanvi dialects.
English is taught widely in Indian schools in metropolitan cities, but - inevitably, in a country of 1.4 billion people - cricketers' ability to speak it fluently can vary wildly when they reach the IPL for the first time. Chawla, who grew up in Uttar Pradesh, was 19 when the league launched in 2008: he could understand English, but recalls: "I couldn't speak naturally in it. What if I say the wrong thing?"
The first dressing room he joined, Kings XI Punjab, featured a strong Australian contingent, including Brett Lee, Shaun Marsh, and head coach Tom Moody. "English wasn't the problem. The accent was the problem," Chawla says, laughing. He relied on team-mates - like captain Yuvraj Singh - to act as translators: "I used to ask Yuvi all the time: 'What did he just say?'"
Moody arrived in India knowing that language could be an issue, after two years as Sri Lanka coach. "I would talk to players one-on-one about their development and tactical messages," he recalls. "Three months in, Mahela Jayawardene came up to me and said, 'Coach, the guys are really enjoying it. But Mali [Lasith Malinga] can't understand a word you're saying!'"
In many cases, multilingual players and support staff find themselves acting as translators. "Whenever new domestic players come into the IPL, you have to be aware of it," says Mike Hesson, who spent five years working at Kings XI Punjab and Royal Challengers Bengaluru after coaching his native New Zealand. "You might need to deliver a message across a number of different mediums.
"You're conscious of speaking slowly around players where English isn't their first language. You might bring another coach along to a one-on-two meeting, just to reaffirm that the player understands the message you're delivering - especially for the newcomers to a squad. It's up to us as coaches to make sure that players can express themselves to us."
Later in his IPL career, when he had become a fluent English speaker, Chawla helped mentor a young Rinku Singh when he joined Kolkata Knight Riders: "We had Jacques Kallis and Simon Katich as coaches. Rinku would ask me to translate. [When that happens] you feel good on the inside. My job at that time was not only on the field, but to guide him off it: he is like a younger brother."
It is not only domestic players who struggle to communicate with English-speaking coaches. In 2016, Bangladeshi fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman joined Moody's Sunrisers Hyderabad and found that only one other player in the squad - the young batter Ricky Bhui - spoke his mother tongue of Bengali. "We had a real challenge there in the early stages," Moody recalled.
David Warner, Sunrisers' captain, would converse with Mustafizur primarily using body language, and once described pointing to his head at mid-off in an attempt to tell his young fast bowler to use his head. Mustafizur appeared to take it on board, but then ran in and bowled a bouncer: he had interpreted the message to mean he should aim at the batter's head.
"That's where you have to be careful," Moody says. "You might think you are getting a message across, but the player you're talking to might be taking something completely different away with them. But it is part of the charm of the IPL: it tests your ability to communicate. It's not always as easy as speaking to a fellow countryman that totally gets your sense of humour or sarcasm."
Mustafizur overcame the challenge, taking 17 wickets as Sunrisers won the 2016 title. It made Moody and Warner one of three overseas captain-coach combinations to win the IPL, and the first since 2009. Surprisingly, it took until 2022 for an Indian head coach to lift the trophy: an Indian captain and a foreign coach is by far the most common combination for a winning team.
Gradually, most franchises have employed more local backroom and support staff. "It was quite organic," Moody says. "We found that our staff covered a number of different areas organically, and between us could speak English, Hindi, Tamil… It became a bit of a melting pot of players and staff that could all contribute to the central cause."
When Moody signed a teenaged Rashid Khan in the 2017 auction, he made sure to recruit a fellow Afghan alongside him. "We needed [Mohammad] Nabi's skill set, but on another level, it made sure Rashid wouldn't be isolated in that squad." In 2022, Rashid was the senior partner in a similar relationship with Noor Ahmad at Gujarat Titans: "I can translate things into Pashto for him," he said.
But language divides extend beyond lines of nationality - and can be turned into a strength. A curiosity of the IPL is that squads often bear minimal resemblance to the regions they represent: Chennai Super Kings, for example, rarely pick players from the state of Tamil Nadu. In 2020, a stump microphone even picked up Kolkata Knight Riders' Dinesh Karthik communicating with Varun Chakravarthy in their native Tamil while playing against CSK.
This season, nine out of ten franchises have Indian captains: Pat Cummins, at Sunrisers, is the only exception. But communication and language remain a pressing issue: before Delhi Capitals' first match of the season, against Lucknow Super Giants, captain Axar Patel handed over to Faf du Plessis in the team huddle, who delivered a pre-match speech in English.
Hesson is a rare example of a native English speaker who went out of his way to pick up some Hindi during his time at the IPL. "I wouldn't say I'm brilliant, but I can understand a fair bit," he explains. "My speaking is more pidgin than full sentences… It's a bit of a respect thing, isn't it? I don't think it's right if someone doesn't feel comfortable expressing themselves in their own country."
Yet even as the IPL is in its 18th season, the expectation that Indian players should learn English prevails, rather than the other way around. Perhaps, in a decade or two, it might become common for foreign players to learn to communicate with Indian players in their own native tongue: as Hesson puts it, "It is the Indian Premier League, after all."