India’s domestic season starts inside bio-bubbles across seven cities
MUMBAI: On Friday evening, Saurashtra skipper Jaydev Unadkat tweeted a picture of his team bonding over food on the ground following their first training session after quarantine. The photograph of players eating out of paper boxes also provided a peek into life in a bio-bubble for 38 state teams in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
The joy of winning their maiden Ranji Trophy last March has long subsided for Saurashtra. Whether Saurashttra can defend the title will hinge on the safe and successful conduct of this T20 competition comprising 169 matches across seven cities and 17 venues. One which will also indicate if IPL can be staged at home in April.
January 31 final
The league phase will be played till January 19 in Mumbai, Indore, Baroda, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai with teams divided into five Elite and one Plate groups. The winners of each group and the next best teams from the five elite groups, will move to Ahmedabad for the quarters with the final scheduled on January 31. All knockout games will be played at the newly refurbished Motera stadium, a trial run before it hosts England next month.
Harder than IPL
Pulling off a domestic competition in a bio-secure environment is a much stiffer challenge for BCCI as opposed to staging IPL in the UAE. All teams have undergone six days of quarantine at designated hotels and cleared three Covid-19 tests before entering the bio-bubble. Use of public transport is prohibited. RT–PCR tests are mandatory every fifth day.
No crowd or media will be allowed but IPL scouts will be in as this is the only chance to see non-india players ahead of next month’s auctions.
While the likes of Hardik Pandya, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey and KL Rahul are not playing, others such as Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ishant Sharma, who missed the Australia tour due to injury, will be out to prove their fitness ahead of the England series.
Top stars
Shikhar Dhawan, Dinesh Karthik, Suryakumar Yadav and Krunal Pandya have been named captains of Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Mumbai and Baroda. The experienced Suresh Raina, who skipped IPL13, will be playing under 20-year-old Priyam Garg’s captaincy for Uttar Pradesh and 37-year-old S Sreesanth, back after serving a seven-year ban for match-fixing, will be representing Kerala under Sanju Samson. Also in action will be Devdutt Paddikal (Karnataka) and Ruturaj Gaikwad (Maharashtra), the young batting attractions of IPL 13, and India’s best T20 leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal representing Haryana.