I disagree. Provided that a ten-team Ranji Trophy provides intense competition, this may not seem like a bad idea. Fair enough, but the Duleep Trophy remains valuable even if the players don't bond as a zonal team as you indicate. Primarily, you are still pitting the best against the best - that will not be the case in the Ranji Trophy because some players are poor, others are old and they are still selected by their state selection committees. Having players not bond is far better than having to judge them on performances against mediocre opposition.
Since the national selectors are responsible for selecting the Duleep Trophy squads, this serves as the perfect opportunity to base their final decisions (of course, the Ranji season will play a large role as well). Furthermore, this is the greatest opportunity for Plate League prospects such as Abid Nabi, Shahbaz Nadeem, Abu Nechim Ahmed and potentially Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravindra Jadeja as well. Scrapping the Duleep Trophy would be a bad idea in my opinion.
There are two more aspects apart from the team bonding which tilt the balance for me.. handling match situations and handling pressure. If I, as a player, am only interested in scoring that 100 to get into the national team, like in zonal games, I will not care regarding how my team fairs. So while I have pressure to score a 100, I don't have the pressure of getting my team to 320 on the last day. So I do not experience match situations and thus find it difficult when I have to face them in the international level. We have seen Indians choke at the end (v Zimbabwe in 99 world cup for instance) and a lot of it has to do with how players haven't handled such situations a lot of times at the domestic level.
Points system also has to be structured for this properly though. If teams are encouraged to go for draws, even Ranji will not be competitive.
The point you raise regarding exposure to the likes of Abid Nabi is very valid. For this, it is vital we have just two divisions (10 teams each) and remove a few more teams (like Monga suggests and explains how to do it in his piece). A player can always change his team if he feels he is stuck in a poor team which can never go up (Even Gilchrist did it because the keeper position was occupied in his state and people switch teams all the time even now).
Another point you raise:
10 teams will mean competition is not as intense. If you want each division can go down to 7 or 8 teams (which would then mean 3 divisions). I am not a fan of too many tournaments or all star tournaments like the Duleep or Challenger. Even though it was an official test match and had superstars, you could see that Australia v Rest of the World could never match the intensity of Australia v England or even your normal test match which usually takes place. Not only that, players struggle regarding running between wickets, working as a team.
Regarding selection: if a player isn't selected for a Ranji side, obviously he wont be known till he goes to another Ranji side and I dont think who the selectors are is that important as state biases among national selectors can always be there also. Thank fully zonal selectors are being abolished and it will hopefully reduce the malaise associated with zonal selecting to a large extent. Moreover, if we have too many tournaments, stars will have to give less importance to one tournament or another. Two divisions, with 10 teams in each, would be pretty good according to me.
