Batting legend Sunil Gavaskar has strongly criticised the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for scheduling India A’s home series against Australia A alongside the Ranji Trophy – India’s premier domestic red-ball tournament.
Gavaskar argued that running shadow tours while the Ranji Trophy season is underway directly devalues and dilutes the importance of India’s crown jewel of domestic cricket.
The former India captain pointed out that overlapping fixtures strip prominent state teams of their top talents. He further emphasized that while national team absences are unavoidable due to international commitments, pulling away additional marquee players for India A duties leaves the state teams heavily depleted right at the start of their campaigns.
Following the Australia A series, the India A squad will immediately travel to New Zealand for three multi-day matches starting October 24, which will force several key players to miss subsequent crucial rounds of the Ranji Trophy.
“The standard in the Elite division has levelled to a great extent as can be seen by teams who were not very competitive earlier, now going on to win the Ranji Trophy. That’s most encouraging though with the India international players hardly playing in the domestic competitions, it’s difficult to know how good some of the individual players are,” wrote Gavaskar in his column for Mid-Day.
“This is noticeable when some of the leading run makers and wicket takers in the Ranji Trophy are picked to play for India. They struggle to find their feet, and some fade away quickly, while some still stay on the fringes but are not quite able to crack it,” he added.
Gavaskar also mentioned that a diluted Ranji Trophy can inflate players' statistics, creating a false impression of their readiness for the international stage.
“There really is no easy solution, and the ‘A’ team matches certainly help in telling who is more likely to succeed internationally and who will remain a top Ranji performer. There’s a case for more A team matches, but not when the domestic competitions, especially the Ranji Trophy, are on. For then it won’t be a surprise with weakened competition, a batter may reach 2000 runs and a bowler 100 wickets in a Ranji season,” he remarked.
Instead of being impressed, Gavaskar voiced his concerns regarding the records being set in the Ranji Trophy Plate Group, citing that the Justice Lodha Committee’s mandate to include all states and Union Territories has effectively lowered the overall standard of India's premier first-class competition.
“Even in the Ranji Trophy, in the Plate Division, there are records being broken and new marks set at both batting and bowling. When the Lodha panel recommended that all states and Union Territories should be included in the Ranji Trophy, it just meant that the standard got lowered,” wrote Gavaskar.
“Most of the new state teams did not even have proper infrastructure and so hired players from other states who couldn’t find a place in their home state teams. These players were good but unable to break through into their home state teams, and so went to the state teams in the Plate Division. When most, if not all, played against teams from the Elite division, they were found wanting, and it just exposed the yawning gap in the standard between the divisions. Yet the records set are still called records because they are playing in the Ranji Trophy,” he stated.
