Kyle Jamieson opted out of the IPL auction in order to spend more time at home - and away from Covid-19 restrictions on tour - and to give himself a window in which to work on his game with an eye towards firming up his spot in the New Zealand side across formats. The fast-bowling allrounder revealed this during a media interaction on the eve of Auckland's Plunket Shield opener against Northern Districts, which is set to begin on Friday.
"Yeah, look, there were a couple of things for me," Jamieson said, when asked why he hadn't put his name on the IPL's auction list. "Firstly, after the last 12 months, it's had its challenges with MIQs (managed isolation and quarantine) and bubbles and spending a fair amount of time in that sort of set-up. It was important for me, when I look at the schedule coming up over the next 12 months to try and find six weeks or eight weeks where I can spend some time at home.
"The second thing for me was, reflecting over the last 12-24 months and understanding that I'm very young in my [international] career and only two years in, that I wanted to have time to work on my game. I guess I didn't really feel like I was where I wanted to be and if I want to compete for spots in the New Zealand sides moving forward across all three formats, I actually need to spend time working on my game and not just trying to play the whole time. Yeah, for me it was just about time at home and just time to work on my game."
Jamieson said he was only skipping the 2022 season of the IPL for now, and hoped he would be able to feature in future editions of the tournament.
"I guess it was [a difficult decision] initially," he said. "I sat with it for a fair while, and it was kind of lucky I had a couple of months in bubbles to sit in my room and have a think, but once I'd made the decision, it was a bit of a weight off my shoulder in a way, in terms of just focusing on myself and trying to get better.
"I'm still pretty young, I still think I'm young at 27 and I've still got a few years ahead, so this is just for this year and looking at what the next 12 months will look like, and hopefully moving forward there will be more opportunities to try and dip my toes into that environment."
Jamieson was the second-most-expensive buy at the 2021 auction, with Royal Challengers Bangalore signing him for INR 15 crore (USD 2 million approx). After that experience - which he had termed "surreal" - he went on to have a difficult first season for the Royal Challengers, playing nine of their 15 games and taking nine wickets while conceding 9.60 runs per over, the highest economy rate of all their bowlers to have bowled in at least five innings.
"I don't think it's either good or bad, it's just another learning, another experience to have, and just trying to learn from situations," he said, when asked for his thoughts on that season. "Look, it certainly changed my life and yeah, it was a big moment that happened, but I guess just trying to learn from that, learn from the experience I had in the IPL, and more so the 12 months in general, and I guess some of the restrictions we had around cricket.
"It's been good in a way to sit back over these last couple of weeks and over the last couple of months to reflect on the 12 months that have gone and take that stuff into the next couple of Tests (against South Africa) and into the next couple of months moving forward."
A year on from that life-changing auction, Jamieson says he is more aware of his own game as a T20 cricketer.
"Look, you see different situations in a game. I think I can kind of read them a little bit better. I have an understanding of where my game is at and how that matches up, but then also a fair bit around what I need to work on. I think just having been around a fair bit of T20 cricket over the last 12 months has actually been pretty good and given me some good learnings and good stuff to reflect on to how I use that April-May period to try and work on my game."