Former India captain Gautam Gambhir feels that the Indian Premier League (IPL) has become way more competitive and tougher when compared to international cricket.
During a chat with Ravichandran Ashwin on his YouTube channel, Gauti said, "In the later half of my career, I feel franchise cricket became way more tougher than international cricket. Especially the IPL. I don't know about other leagues. Because if you see in the first 3 or 4 years when you play an international game, you face 5 or 6 top-quality bowlers. But when you play in the IPL in the first couple of years, when the standard was not as good as it's now, you could always target 2-3 domestic bowlers and for a batter, it was far more easy to get runs in franchise cricket."
"But today when I look at international T20 sides, apart from 2 or 3 teams, I don't think there's enough competition when it comes to playing for India as not many teams can match the quality that India has. In today's day and age, I feel IPL has become far more competitive than international cricket," the KKR mentor added.
Gambhir also talked about the importance of IPL and domestic cricket while selecting the Indian squads for different formats of the game.
"For the T20 World Cup and for the T20 side India should be selected from the IPL. For the 50-over format, teams should be selected from Vijay Hazare and your Test side should be selected from 1st class cricket, the red ball cricket. As simple as it can get."
"Because if you start selecting people in 50-over format or even in red ball cricket from an IPL competition, I think you will be making a lot of shortcuts because a lot of these young players do not focus on red ball cricket or the 50-over format and then you're literally walking on the edge," Gauti added.