Cricket has made a comeback with the Englandwest Indies series, and now the BCCI
is gearing up to host the IPL in Septemberoctober. But there is still no clarity on its plan to restart domestic cricket in India.
ricket is the last thing on anyone’s mind right now.”
“Let the disease be cricket can wait.”
“Let us try and plan the return of cricket by staging the Indian Premier League rst. If we can do that, the rest will follow.”
“Why should we bother about domestic cricket right now? We still have time.”
These are some of the representative statements during discussions with a variety of individuals concerned with cricket in India — from club cricketers to parents of teenagers to rstclass cricketers to the administrators — ever since the pandemic brought the sport — just like everything else — to a standstill.
The most pertinent of these representative reactions was the last one, which obviously came from a Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) insider. “Why should we bother about domestic cricket right now? We still have time.”
And as someone who has been passionately (and objectively as well) following domestic cricket in India for almost two decades, one couldn’t help but wonder that despite the pandemic having changed the world, it hasn’t changed the BCCI’S lackadaisical attitude towards domestic cricket a wee bit. Stepping stone to international cricket. The most competent structure. First aspiration of a young cricketer.
All these terms have been used for In
controlled
rst, dia’s domestic cricket circuit by pundits and players of repute for years. But the fact of the matter is, especially over the last decade, domestic cricket structure in India has been reduced to something less important: you just have to get it out of the way.
With the Indian Premier League (IPL) mushrooming as the cash cow — and the most (read only) important domestic tournament in the world of cricket — a generation of Indian cricketers could aord a career in cricket without wearing the real blue cap that mattered the most for their predecessors. The ipside of it is domestic cricket was further cornered in the priority list of the BCCI.
While the IPL deservedly has a fulledged setup with regard to marketing, branding and what not, the BCCI doesn’t even have a dedicated, small team to look after domestic cricket. Contrary to perception, domestic cricket is not just Ranji Trophy.
Besides the premier rstclass championship, the domestic season for senior men is supposed to consist of a conventional highprole tie between two top outts, a conventional interzonal rstclass tournament which has been reduced to a joke in the recent past, two 50over tournaments and an interstate T20 tournament.
Add to that a host of tournaments in dierent formats for juniors (under14, under16, under19 and under23) and women
With the Indian
Premier League (IPL) mushrooming as the cash cow — and the most important domestic tournament in the world of cricket — a generation of Indian cricketers could aord a career in cricket without wearing the real blue cap that mattered the most for their predecessors.
and you can gauge how comprehensive and complex domestic cricket structure in India is. And it’s incredible how, despite very little interest in trying to promote it, it somehow gets into a sort of discorded rhythm year after year.
With the world having missed its beat for the last four months, the BCCI is no dierent. Naturally, with all the powerhouses in the BCCI concentrating either on getting their tenures extended or in trying to explore options of staging the postponed edition of IPL2020, domestic cricket has found no takers this time around.
As a result, even in midjuly, thousands of cricketers — boys and girls, men and women — aspiring to represent their states in domestic cricket, have no idea whether they can compete in interstate competitions this year. Forget about playing matches, they don’t even know when and how they can ocially resume training.
On June 11, the BCCI president Sourav Ganguly wrote to the state associations in what was his rst formal communication ever since the previous season came to an abrupt end in March with 16■ matches (1 Irani Cup, 4 Vizzy Trophy and 163 women’s junior) not being played.
In that email, Ganguly had stated the BCCI will provide more details on the domestic structure “in two weeks” and also circulate standard operating procedure (SOP) to be adopted while training.
Five weeks hence, neither have state associations heard anything substantial about the forthcoming domestic season nor have the SOPS been circulated.
As things stand, there’s no way domestic cricket tournaments can start as per the conventional late Augustearly September window. And if resumption is possible in
September/ October, obviously the attempts to stage the IPL — in India or overseas — is going to further push the senior men’s domestic season.
Assuming that the tournaments can start either in December or January, 2021, it would be prudent to scrap all the whiteball tournaments for a season and focus solely on hosting the Ranji Trophy. When it comes to the Ranji Trophy, with the number of teams having surged to 3■ in the last couple of seasons, it would be a challenge.
The most logical option of hosting the Ranji Trophy is to divide 2■ teams in the Elite league ve groups (6x3, 5x2). Each of these ve groups can be assembled in a city with three venues and can play the league stage in ve weeks.
Simultaneously, the 10 teams in Plate league can be involved in a knockout challenge (four rounds) with the winner qualifying for the Ranji knockouts. Top three teams from each of the ve groups and the winner of the Plate challenge can then vie for Ranji knockouts with 16 teams.
This would reduce the number of rounds from the last year’s 12 (13 weeks) to nine (10 weeks), which could help them save some time. A similar format can be adopted for women’s twoday games and possibly for men and women’s Under23 tournaments.
With the risks involved in congregating kids below 20 years of age, it would be a surprise if the BCCI doesn’t scrap all interstate tournaments up to under19 level for boys and girls for the forthcoming season. Let alone junior cricket, considering how little they have been focussing on domestic cricket and assuming the pandemic doesn’t subside for the next three months, it would be a miracle if domestic cricketers can vie for any honours this season.