Ranji Trophy goes slow
by Harsha Bhogle
By the time this month ends, Rahul Dravid will have played 9 tests against Pakistan in 22 months. You need to go really really far to figure out how long it has taken him to play his last 9 games for Karnataka given that in the last 60 months he has played for them once. And that is one better than Sachin Tendulkar for Mumbai.
You can go further. In the last five years Anil Kumble has played two games for Karnataka, Harbhajan Singh two for Punjab and Virender Sehwag 4 for Delhi. So there you are, cut and dry, the reason our Ranji Trophy is dull, uncompetitive and, this year, somnolent, is because the stars don't play. Wrong. The reason the Ranji Trophy has been dead this year is that the teams are boring the daylights out of each other. When we were younger, we used to have a competition called slow cycling where you had to go from point A to point B as slowly as possible without putting your foot down or falling off the bike. That was a million times more interesting than the slow cricket we have had this year.
I have just been to cricinfo to check out on a few games and at the time of writing this piece Gujarat have made 200 from 93 overs in response to which Mumbai galloped to 207 from 97. Maharashtra made 237 from 111.4 overs and in reply Railways were 98 for 5 in 54. Punjab made 316 in 136.4 overs and Andhra battled along to 185-2 from 76. Both Punjab and Gujarat batting first made less than 200 on day 1.
Batsmen must be getting paid by the minute these days with points taken off for runs made! Witness this one for example, probably the saddest way to play a cricket match. Bengal play Gujarat and make 462 in 198 overs, that's over an hour into the third day of a four day match. Presumably they were hoping to knock them over twice in the remaining time, assuming they wanted a result, and, continuing in denial mode, Gujarat made 371 in 160 overs. Nobody got any points and it was the equivalent of shooing off a spectator who might have wandered close by. In fact Bengal must have thought they had done pretty well in terms of run-rate (2.33) having significantly improved it from their previous match against Karnataka when they managed 335 from 151 overs at 2.21 per over.
Railways and Delhi went the other extreme, finishing off their game in two days with Railways batting first bowled out for 77; and when Delhi batted Murali Kartik took 8-40. It must have been some pitch there had it been visible.
It is only when you play positively on good pitches that you get good cricketers. There are two elements to it– good pitches and positive cricket. By the look of it, it is a combination that is eluding us and the BCCI don't seem to have noticed it either for I haven't heard anyone say that six rounds into this year's Ranji Trophy we have had some pathetic cricket.
There's more trouble. Lakshmipathy Balaji hasn't been playing (a fact that seems to have escaped some demonstrators in Chennai!), and we have seen virtually nothing of VRV Singh either. Ashish Nehra has vanished and seriously Munaf Patel remains the only contender for a new ball bowler's slot. It begs a debate. It is not only good pitches that we need but good physios and trainers for Ranji Trophy teams as well. I know some beginning has been made there but clearly more is needed. Riches don't always translate into intent.
And here are a couple of points to mull over. Mohammad Kaif, whose exclusion evoked much sympathy, is only playing his 9th game for Uttar Pradesh in five years, has a first class average of 37 and has five centuries only. Does he need to do more in the longer game? I think he is a better player than those numbers but like a mirror, numbers never lie.
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