Need for a better schedule

Earlier this month, Shardul Thakur highlighted the hectic Ranji Trophy schedule with just a three-day gap between matches. The schedule is harsh, in particular, on fast bowlers who get little time for recovery.

Can the BCCI make it a four-day gap in the second half? Yes, but it will make the season even longer. The 2023-24 season started in late June and ended in mid-March. Rahul Dravid proposed a solution: "Maybe we need to re-look and see whether some of the tournaments that we are conducting are necessary." Dravid did not specify which tournaments he was talking about, but he might have had the Deodhar Trophy, the 50-over zonal tournament, in mind. The BCCI had reintroduced it this season for the first time since 2019-20.

The Deodhar Trophy's red-ball counterpart is the Duleep Trophy. The players are of the view that the Duleep Trophy is an important tournament as it acted as a pathway for India A and the Test team.

Another issue was scheduling matches in north India in January and early February. The fog over there at that time of the year resulted in so little play that nine games had to be called off even before a team achieved a first-innings lead.

In Gujarat's match against Chandigarh in Chandigarh, only 26 overs were possible across four days. Despite being the favourites, Gujarat had to be satisfied with one point. Eventually, it cost them a knockout spot.

The solution, as Uttar Pradesh head coach Sunil Joshi also suggested, is simple: don't schedule games in the north in the first half of the tournament.

Saurashtra captain Jaydev Unadkat gave another suggestion. "What we can look to do is advance the Ranji Trophy so that it does not spill over into January, which is when a lot of games get fogged out," he told ESPNcricinfo. "Try to advance the season sometime in August, start with T20s, followed by the Ranji Trophy, and then finish with the Vijay Hazare Trophy.

"In any case, the Vijay Hazare is held at five venues (one for each group). Those venues can be picked based on the weather."

In sync with CK Nayudu Trophy

It is not that all was doom and gloom when it came to the schedule. This season, the Ranji Trophy games started two days before the Under-23 CK Nayudu Trophy games; it was the other way around last time. This meant those who did not make it to the XI for their Ranji side could be released for the CK Nayudu Trophy game. Last season, they had no option other than to carry drinks.

This also meant when the teams needed those players, they were not coming in cold. For example, someone like Vidarbha's Harsh Dubey, who didn't feature in every Ranji Trophy match, played five games in the CK Nayudu Trophy where he picked up 32 wickets at an average of 17.50.

Review the DRS

In 2019-20, the BCCI had implemented "limited DRS" for the semi-final and the final of the Ranji Trophy. It did not have ball-tracking and UltraEdge, which meant only half the problem was solved. The board went one step ahead in 2022-23 with the full version for the final.

This time, the full DRS was once again available for the final, but for only one semi-final, Mumbai vs Tamil Nadu, which was broadcast on TV. In the other semi-final, Madhya Pradesh were on the receiving end of a couple of wrong decisions against Vidarbha, which led their coach Chandrakant Pandit to say that the BCCI should implement it uniformly.

In the final, as many as ten decisions were overturned on review. The board should look into having full DRS for all the knockout games, as a wrong decision can not only impact the result but also hamper a player's career.

Plate League performances

"The only way we can attract attention, if at all that is possible at this level, is by doing things differently." This was Hyderabad captain Rahul Singh, talking about his team being relegated to Plate League for this season.

He was not wrong. Hyderabad were always going to be a cut above the rest of the Plate League teams, which meant it was impossible to evaluate their performances. So they needed to do something extraordinary. Rahul finished the tournament with 694 runs at an average of 86.75 and a strike rate of - wait for it - 134.49.

Similarly, Tilak Varma scored three hundreds and a fifty in five innings, and averaged 137.33. Tanmay Agarwal scored the fastest triple-century in first-class cricket en route to his 366 against Arunachal Pradesh. In that match, Hyderabad were 529 for 1 in 48 overs at one point. The players would be the first ones to accept that things would not have been the same in Elite Group.

This has been an issue since 2018-19, when the BCCI introduced nine new teams in domestic cricket. One solution is that the five north-east zone teams - Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim - play among themselves in June and then send a combined team for the Ranji Trophy. Else the BCCI will have to wait for them to level up with older teams.

Neutral curators

This season, every pitch was signed off by a neutral curator, which meant there were fewer extreme surfaces.

"Some of the pitches were flat, which I suppose is fine," Unadkat said. "But in terms of the balance between bat and ball, I think plenty of it was restored. There were one or two problematic pitches, but the neutral curators ensured wickets were largely good.

Source:
courtesy of ESPN

by Hemant Brar and Shashank Kishore

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