Skippers raise match fee, white ball issues at Ranji conclave

MUMBAI: While there was unanimous support for the home-andaway match format in Ranji Trophy, captains and coaches raised afew concerns at their annual conclave, a platform for domestic players to provide feedback to BCCI, held here on Monday.

“The home-and-away format got a positive response. Everyone feels it is better than playing on neutral venues (BCCI tried that in 2016-17),” an insider present at the meeting said.

To make matches more competitive and reduce stress on the players, BCCI this season divided the teams into four pools instead of three. “It made the matches more competitive, but reduced the number of matches from eight in a three-pool league, to six.”

It meant fewer opportunities and lesser match fees due to the reduced number of playing days.

The BCCI representative mentioned that the issue of fewer matches could get addressed as there’s a good chance North East teams could be granted affiliation and play Ranji next season.

The Supreme Court-appointed Lodha Committee in its report has recommended that all teams from North East must be equal stakeholders in BCCI. Whether it’s practical remains to be seen as there’s a huge gulf in standard.

Most teams had issues with the quality of the white SG-Glace ball used in limited overs tournaments instead of the Kookaburra.

The Board representative said it was an experiment and it would ask the manufacturers to improve quality as it intends to introduce it in international matches as well. Kookaburra is used in IPL and limited overs internationals in India. The Kookaburra ball is quite expensive (approx ~10,000 per ball) compared to the locally made ball.

There were lot of complaints about umpiring. The BCCI official assured steps to improve that by conducting tests and inducting younger umpires. To prevent teams from doctoring pitches to gain results, a suggestion was made to hold five-day matches in the league stage to give enough time to force a result.

The Committee of Administrators has raised the domestic players’ per-day fee to ~35,000 from ~10,000, but BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary has yet to accept it. The captains sought to know its status and were assured it would be cleared soon.

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The homeandaway format got a positive response. Everyone feels it is better than playing on neutral venues (which BCCI tried in 201617).

BCCI OFFICIAL, on what Ranji skippers and coaches proposed at the conclave