A format for Domestic Cricket in India

This post proposes a development of an earlier format discussed here, which was inspired in parts by the Cricket Committee proposed revision of the domestic format, the Super 6/Super 8 idea from the World Cup and the need for broader First Class Cricket with more games and a higher profile. I would refer readers to the discussion in the comments section of this post on homer’s blog. The outline is for this version is as follows:

1. The Duleep Trophy as we know it will be scrapped. No Zonal team will be constituted.
2. The Irani Trophy will not feature Ranji Champions v Rest of India, but will feature India v Rest of India, and will be a 5 day match scheduled to suit the schedule of the Test team before their international test season starts in October.
3. The Salve Challenger Trophy will also be scrapped.

The reason for Duleep and Challenger trophies being scrapped is that they consist of scratch teams, and are reduced to being rank selection trials.

A look at the domestic seasons in the top test playing nations reveals the following:

Competition, Matches per team, Number of Teams
India (Ranji Trophy), 8, 27
India (Duleep Trophy), 3, 6
Australia, 11, 6
South Africa (SuperSport), 10, 6
South Africa (Provincial), 8, 17
England, 16, 17
New Zealand (State Championships + State Shield), 18, 6
West Indies, 5, 6
Pakistan (Patrons Trophy), 7, 9
Pakistan (Pentangular Trophy), 4, 5

Australia also have a second eleven tournament parallel to the Pura Cup. The number of matches in the above list are based on the 2006-07 season (2006 for England). Pakistan also have the Quaid-e-Azam trophy in addition to the Patrons Trophy and Pentangular Trophy. It is clear that India does not play enough first class cricket. Should India have fewer first class teams? If you consider the population and interest in cricket, you might consider that India should indeed possibly have more than 27 first class teams.

In order to ensure that more Cricket is played, heres a modification to the system proposed earlier. Let the two teams be divided geographically int0 2 Zones – North and South.

Teams in North Zone:
Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Services, Tripura, Railways, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Baroda, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand

Teams in South Zone:
Saurashtra, Maharashtra, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Orissa, Goa, Kerala, Vidharbha.

Each Zone would have its own Round Robin League – Each side playing 13 games (in North Zone) and 12 (in South Zone) respectively. The 5 Top sides from each Zone at the end of the league phase would play in a Super League – carrying over points against the other 4 Zones in their respective leagues, and playing 5 games each in the League phase. However, a win in the Super League would be worth more than a Win in the North Zone or South Zone League. So if a team carries over 2 points for an outright win from the zonal league phase, a win in Super league would be worth 3 points.

The top 4 Teams would compete in the knock out semi-final and final. The season will begin on October 1 and the Ranji Trophy Final will be scheduled for the First Week of April (the only place India tours in the first week of April is West Indies, so Test players would be available for the Ranji Final. Most schools also complete their final exams by then). The Zonal Leagues would be completed by the end of January – each side playing 13 games in 4 months – October, November, December, January. The super league will be completed by 15th of March – 5 matches for each side in 7 tough weeks.

Each 4 day game will be followed by the corresponding One Day game for the Ranji ODI league. The National One Day Final will be the Final first class game of the season.

Is it possible to fit all this Cricket into a single season? 12/13 or 18 first class games in a season? The New Zealanders do it, as do the South Africans. English counties sides at one time played over 30 first class games in the English season – mid March to mid September – including Test Matches. Given that each association has their own Cricket ground, this is not as difficult as it looks. It will require a great deal of planning and management – every effort will have to be made to ensure that teams are not tired out by uselessly long rail journeys – there are plenty of airline options in India now. But logistically, it is not unrealistic.

Given top quality grounds, televised Ranji trophy matches, and a higher profile in general (possibly 1 overseas player per team as well – but thats a debate for another day), local associations would also be more accountable – would be in sharper focus for cricketing reasons. We may even find better attendance at First Class games if they are televised and hence given a higher profile. Local selectors at the smaller centres will be in focus – and the local associations, which currently wield enormous power (through their vote), but are never held accountable will have an audience which will question and criticize – keeping them on their toes. Also, onces these associations get into the habit of having to organize a first class match every week or every other week – 5-6 months a year, they will automatically learn better cricket management, and engage in superior professional practices.

If First Class Cricketers are gauranteed 12 First class and 12 One Day matches a year – and paid say a flat fee of say 30 thousand rupees for a Ranji match and about 18 thousand rupees for an One Day game (they probably make more now and this figure could be higher – i have only mentioned these figures for the sake of the argument), plus performance bonuses, a domestic cricketer will make 5,00,000 rupees a year atleast which is a decent income ensuring a comfortable middle class existence (its about the same amount of money that an engineer with 4-5 years of good experience makes). This is crucial if the quality of first class cricket has to be sustained. If players are forced to give up first class cricket at the age of 30, not because they’re not making runs or taking wickets, but because they need to support a family and can’t do so on first class cricket wages, then Cricket is the loser. With better pay, senior professionals from the top first class teams would be encouraged to move to smaller teams to help them out.

The point is the create a counterpoint to the Indian side as far as the abstract behemoth called “Indian Cricket” is concerned. Until this happens, the national team exists precariously, on a brittle foundation.

West Zone win Deodhar Trophy after 16 years…..

West Zone hammered South Zone by 192 runs in their final league match to celebrate their first Deodhar Trophy One Day Tournament victory since 1991. The Deodhar Trophy is the Zonal One Day league, with the team at the top of the table at the end of the league fixtures being awarded the title. This caps a brilliant season for Amol Muzumdar – the West Zone captain, after his Mumbai side’s terrific come from behind Ranji Trophy victory. West Zone remained unbeaten in the tournament, chasing competently (234 and 253) and defending totals with aplomb (conceded 134 all out and 116 all out).

This result is however difficult to assess, because the scratch combinations that are created – picking and choosing an eleven from a zone, result in matches which are largely selection matches. While these have their merits, the Challenger Trophy has been designed for this express purpose. The Deodhar Trophy lies somewhere in between the Ranji ODI tournament and the Challenger Tournament, in terms of the type of team which participates in it. West Zone were playing at home this year, as the tournament was played at Brabourne Stadium at Churchgate, Mumbai. That further queers the pitch for the competition. It is hard to say whether home advantage may have played a huge role in West Zone’s success, but being used to the ground and knowing the conditions, especially under lights, must have resulted in some advantage.

The domestic season is now complete – with 2 first class tournaments and 3 ODI tournaments, in addition to the season opening Irani Trophy. Robin Uthappa and Ranadeb Bose were the stand out performers in the first class season and must be on the fringes of the selection for the Test tour of England in July-August. Manoj Tiwary of Bengal was the other player who gave a superb account of himself – however, with the Test Match middle order not short of candidates, especially with Yuvraj returning to full fitness and Ganguly making a superb comeback in South Africa, Tiwary may have a wait a little longer. The uncertainty with regard to Sehwag may prompt the selectors to pick the extra opener for the tour.

With all the attention focussed on the World Cup, important work remains to be completed back in India – the domestic season needs to be revamped, with the Ranji Trophy format likely to see some fundamental change. This is where the foundations for future World Cup and Test tour campaigns will be laid, and a domestic season which is rigorous and provides plenty of scope for high quality competition (maximising participation from Test players) will go a long way in providing a steady stream of talent which will not only keep the Test players on their toes, but will also allow India to stay competitive when some of the linchpins get injured. It is vital to the Greg Chappell focus on player development.

If the Ganguly era was the personality driven first generation of the national teams revival, and the Dravid era is to be the process driven second generation, then a revival of the profile of Domestic Cricket, even if it isnt to the days when the Ranji final was watched by full houses must be the next generation of reform which will strengthen the core of India’s cricket. The opportunity to host the 2011 World Cup, allied with Delhi’s successful bid to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games will hopefully mark a fourth generation involving massive development of sporting infrastructure. As the preeminent sport in India, Cricket must take a lead role here. One only hopes that these ambitions of continuous development are not mired in the last generations penchant for bureaucratic lethargy.

The national cricket team (even if it is technically the BCCI XI, i think it is Ok to dispense with the pedantry and claim it as our own) thus has a larger role to play in the development of sport than one might think.

I hope they do well, and i hope the right lessons are learnt from their efforts. If they are not, then the pride demonstrated by the Amol Muzumdars of our Cricket will be in vain.

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Mumbai in the 2006-07 Ranji Trophy Final

Mumbai beat Baroda by 63 runs to make the finals of the Elite Group Ranji Trophy final, in a match which was in many ways representative of the state of Indias domestic cricket today. On a wicket which was obviously (judging by the scores) not flat, Amol Muzumdar and Yusuf Pathan (brother of Irfan Pathan, who also played) were the only players who reached 50. In fact, Muzumdar’s 97 in the Mumbai first innings, along with important runs in the group stage, where Mumbai came back from the dead to make the knockout stage, make him a front runner for a batsman spot in the next Indian Test squad. The Baroda batting, with Williams and Parab opening followed by the experienced Jacob Martin and the Pathan brothers, could muster only 143 and 173 against a Mumbai attack which had no India pacemen, and only 1 former India spinner – Nilesh Kulkarni. The Mumbai batting was even more astounding. After bowling out Baroda for 143, for a first innings lead of 90, Mumbai seemed to have spectacularly squandered their advantage by being reduced to 0/5 and then 6/17, before the wicketkeeper Vinayak Samant put together an innings of 66 to take Mumbai to the relative respectability of 145. Set 237 to win, Baroda could manage on 173.

This was a low scoring game by any standards. This Ranji Semi-final, brought no prospective India talent to the fore. The low scores were probably down to the quality of the batting and the nature of the wicket. The bowling on either side was not of particularly high quality either. Irfan Pathan had a good outing 7/96 in the match. Amol Muzumdar – who is arguably the finest batsman in India, never to have played Test cricket (it has been his misfortune to have competed with Ganguly, Laxman, Tendulkar and Dravid for a middle order spot), made runs – but then, he always makes runs for Mumbai. So yet another Ranji Trophy has passed, and no significant talent has come through. If you think about it, most of the talent coming in to the India side has come from age-group and A performances, and just been confirmed for a year in the Ranji Trophy before being brought into the national side. Why is the influence of the Ranji Trophy and the Duleep Trophy so minimal then?

The match was played at the Moti Bagh ground, which last hosted an international match (and ODI) in 1988-89, and has never hosted a Test match. International games at Baroda are played at the IPCL ground. One wonders why this was the case. Even the CCI in Mumbai rarely hosts Ranji matches now, even though it is an international quality ground which just hosted the final of the ICC Champions Trophy.

First class cricket in India is not a realistic practice opportunity for India players, in large part because of scheduling. England play first class cricket for a full 2 months – April and May, before their main summer Test tour. which is usually in July-August. Even for the early summer tour, which begins in mid to late May, England players have the chance to play nearly 6 weeks of first class cricket. First Class cricket in India has undergone plenty of change in recent years. The Duleep Trophy with 6 zones is just too few though, when you consider the fact that there are about 27 first class sides in India. Any player who plays Duleep Trophy and makes the finals, plays a maximum of 3 Duleep trophy games!

Here’s a possible solution – the Duleep Trophy as a Zonal competition needs to be expanded. And here’s how it may be possible – the Ranji Champion side, plays as itself in the Duleep Trophy. Every Zone – West, Central, East, South and North is allowed to field 2 sides. Add the invited foreign side to this (which is a great move), and we have a 12 Team competition.

If the Ranji Trophy (where a player who plays all available games and makes the Ranji Final, plays 8-9 first class games) can be completed before New Year’s day – a Boxing Day Ranji Final every year….. then from January – April, you could have a 12 Team round robin Duleep competition, where every side gets to play 13 matches. These matches would be higher quality matches than the Ranji Trophy. India players would then have 21 first class games (which in a 6 month season – October to April) is not too high for first class professional cricketers to play in. 84 days of cricket in the year would be a significant amount of First Class cricket.

It has to be a problem when the Indian side plays more Test Cricket (9-12 Tests) in a full year, than the average First Class cricketer plays First class games. It is no wonder then, that India do not have a strong bench. Even in Australia, with their small population and just 6 first class Teams, they play 10 first class games in a season – 11 including the final – more than the average first class cricketer in India.

Currently we have two major first class tournaments – Ranji and Duleep Trophy, with their corresponding ODI tournaments, the Ranji ODI and Deodhar Trophy. Add to this, the Salve Challenger Trophy and the Irani Trophy (a one off season opener).

First class cricket will be able to build an audience if enough of it is played with reasonable quality and with reasonable participation from Test players. Unless this happens, first class cricket will remain irrelevant as it is today. With 20-21 first class games available to each player, what would the standard of performance be? 2000 runs in a season and 100 wickets. That should be reasonable.

Money should not be a problem – BCCI can probably afford to under-write the whole domestic season – but they will eventually make money from first class cricket as well. One often wonders why cricket grounds in India are in such bad shape – the reason ought to be clear, most of them are used for cricket, for 3-4 first class matches in a year, at the most! With a 21 match season, they would afford to maintain full time ground staffs and first class cricketers would be able to make a good living. If you look at Australia, each state hosts each of the other states – 5 matches, in addition to this, they host a test match (except Hobart, which hosts the Australia A match against the tourists) and at least 2 if not more tri-series matches. That is 8 international quality cricket matches in a season at least. In addition, they probably also host a few second eleven matches and club finals.

First Class cricket in India needs to become relevant, for India to consistently threaten the summit of World Cricket. Until that happens, we will keep having Ranji Trophy tournaments and finals, which Mumbai will keep winning, as if by divine right! In the last 14 seasons (1993-94 to 2006-07), Mumbai have reached the Ranji finals 8 Times now, won 6, lost 1 and we will know in a few days whether what happens this year). In all this while, they have contributed 1 Test player – Sachin Tendulkar and 1 ODI player – Ajit Agarkar to the India cause.

Something is clearly wrong….

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