The eyes of the cricketing world will be focused on Dubai today for the ‘routine’ India-Pakistan group fixture at an ICC event. Despite the lopsided head-to-head record in these games over the decades, the media frenzy and social-media chatter around these ‘encounters’ never seems to abate, with broadcasters doing everything they can to add fuel to fire even when the actual cricketing fare on offer has often been lacklustre and the excitement largely manufactured.
While the ICC Champions Trophy has garnered eyeballs and mindspace over the last couple of weeks, Indian domestic cricket has arguably provided more engrossing and riveting contests, even when the biggest stars in the game didn’t feature in them. Has there ever been an instance of a fielder’s helmet making such a decisive ‘impact’ in such a significant juncture of a knockout game! The Ranji Trophy knockout rounds once again demonstrated what, and how much, can happen over five days of cricket. Most of the players featuring in these games are often referred to as ‘journeymen’ with a few hoping to find their way back to the national set-up and some others hoping to catch the eye.
Kerala reaching its maiden Ranji Trophy final is a momentous achievement, especially when their most high-profile current player – Sanju Samson – was not part of either the quarterfinal or the semifinal, having surgery on an injured finger and expected to be fit in time for the Indian Premier League (IPL) starting next month.
If anything, it seems to have only strengthened Kerala’s resolve as they repeatedly bounced back from the brink and lived to fight another day. Trailing Jammu and Kashmir by 80 first-innings runs with just a single wicket in hand would have prompted some sides to throw in the towel, but Salman Nizar and Basil Thampi somehow contrived to go one up – literally – on their hardy opponents. That one-run lead in itself wouldn’t have counted for anything had a resolute middle- and lower-middle order not batted through the final day with J&K needing eight wickets to enter the semifinals.
A margin of one run in the quarters and two in the semifinals proves that Kerala never know when they are out of a game and have made a habit of fighting till the bitter end. The fact that their head coach Amay Khurasiya and the vital spin twins – Jalaj Saxena and Aditya Sarvate – don’t hail from the state points to the general high standards in Indian domestic cricket, even though the national selectors may sometimes seem slow in recognising such performances.
No quarter given
Kerala’s opponents in the final, Vidarbha, have been the form team of the Ranji season, and earned their title shot after outright victories over domestic heavyweights Tamil Nadu and Mumbai in the two knock-out rounds. They were ahead of the game in both contests but, especially in the semifinal against the defending champions, had to endure some anxious moments as the lower half of the Mumbai batting – featuring the likes of Shardul Thakur, Shams Mulani, Tanush Kotian, Mohit Avasthi and Royston Dias – kept coming at the Vidarbha bowlers. Chasing 406 at Nagpur in the fourth innings and needing an outright win to progress, the visitors seemed dead and gone at 124 for six, but the aura that Mumbai carries is hard to shake off.
The seventh-wicket partnership yielded more than a 100 and the last pair added more than 50. When the runs required came into double figures, there may have been a few anxious moments for the Vidarbha set-up, but they finally got the job done and their all-round strength will make them favourites against Kerala, who will be in uncharted territory.
Though Karun Nair didn’t have a great semifinal for his adopted team Vidarbha, he has been in rare form throughout the season, which must have caught the national selectors’ eye. But most of those playing significant roles in their teams’ success do it for the pride in their performance and the love of the game. Saxena, for example, has longevity, a body of work and statistics that make him a genuine ‘domestic giant’, but at 38 years of age, he has made peace with the fact that he would never know if he could have cut it at an even higher level of cricket.
Guest appearance
The debacle in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy Down Under, and the 0-3 whitewash suffered at home at the hands of New Zealand prior to that, had prompted the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to pass an edict to its star players to turn out for their domestic teams. As a result, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma played Ranji Trophy for the first time in a decade or even longer. Their participation brought media coverage and crowds unprecedented for the domestic First-Class tournaments, but that interest lasted only as long as the two icons were on the field.
Some youngsters at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium made it clear that they were there just to watch Kohli as otherwise “Ranji kaun dekhta hai (who watches Ranji)! Ironically, chants of ‘RCB, RCB’ reverberated during a First-Class game, proving that Kohli is identified more with his IPL franchise than the team for which he was playing.
Neither Kohli nor Sharma managed to do anything significant on the field for their Ranji teams in their one-off appearances. They seemed to be akin to short-duration punishment postings for errant civil servants before being rehabilitated.
By the time the knockouts came calling, it was back to the players who had a real stake in the fortunes of their teams. Teams like Mumbai, Tamil Nadu and Saurashtra have a regular presence in the latter stages of the Ranji Trophy, Haryana have been there off and on, Vidarbha and Gujarat have tasted success over the last few years, while Kerala and J&K are recent additions to the list of contenders.
Apart from them, there are the likes of Karnataka, Delhi, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Assam, Baroda, Jharkhand, Andhra and Maharashtra that, even if they don’t have the teams to present a sustained challenge, produce talented players who can star at the highest level.
“Ranji kaun dekhta hai may be a feeling shared only by the most casual of cricket fans, who are only interested in stars rather than a genuine contest between bat and ball. The real connoisseurs of the game will always be interested in what’s happening at venues throughout the length and breadth of this vast country.
