Ranji Trophy 2011-12: Super League

[kabira]

yes its working. But to make it evne competitive. there should be playoff between two teams from elite that missed out and two teams from plate that got promoted. More like Pre Quarterfinal..

[coffee_rules]

Mumbai gets easy QFs once again.

[ViruRulez]

Interesting ones this year. Biggies like UP, Bengal, Baroda, Delhi and Railways missing out whereas smaller teams like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Maharastra making it big. Amit Mishra has also done well as a captain it seems as Haryana has moved to the QF under his captaincy. Another interesting thing is that two teams from Maharastra have made it to the semis whereas none from Gujarat has made it this time round. My prediction is either a Southie Team or a Maharastra team will take the cup this time round. :winky:

[ViruRulez]

Mumbai gets easy QFs once again.

Mumbai topped their group yet again .. so, if it is as per intl. scheduling then it will be best of group A vs worst of group B etc. ... maybe that is why .. except the Rajasthan vs Hyderabad which are even teams, all the rest of the QFs look a bit one sided with one team a lot stronger .. but then nothing can be said as these small teams came after beating the likes of UP, Baroda, Bengal, Delhi etc. and so, they are probably not that weak and might not be one sided either

[kabira]

its never easy in knock outs.

[coffee_rules]

3 Southies in Q/F holy crap. No team from Gujarat......:( I don't like that two teams from Plate division get direct Q/F birth, there should be play offs..

I agree. Only the winner from plate league needs to be promoted. A wildcard match between the 4th place holders of the 2 elite leagues should be the 8th team in the QFs.

[The Dark Horse]

so early...dont worry no one competes for these thread :hysterical:

If TN reaches finals let me create the match thread pls :D

[bulbul]

If TN reaches finals let me create the match thread pls :D

what if its Karntaka vs TN ? :--D

[The Dark Horse]

^ you can find the answer in my last post itself :P

[bulbul]

^ you can find the answer in my last post itself :P

we will ask Rajiv to make a lotte :--D if its Kar vs Mumbai... i will open a thread even if some one else opens :winky:

[skindia]

Uthappa available for QF ??

[Trundler27]

Wow.... Punjab, Bengal, Delhi, and Baroda all are eliminated?? This just proves that TN, Mumbai, and Karnataka are the truly elite and consistent teams in our domestic circuit... all the rest are just seasonal performers that prop up every now and then. However, Punjab and Bengal in particular had some very exciting performers this year like Brainder, Mandeep, Gony, Dinda, Manoj Tiwary, Shami. I really like Hyderabad as the underdog this year... let's see how they fare in the knock outs.

[Feed]

Faith in players took Hyderabad back to top level More... Faith in players took Hyderabad back to top level After their 21 all out debacle against Rajasthan last season, Hyderabad dropped several players. This season, new coach Sunil Joshi insisted players be stuck with, and they have earned a quarter-final against Rajasthan Nagraj Gollapudi December 31, 2011 The first day of November 2010 began quietly for the Hyderabad team. The morning air in Jaipur had a little nip, but the sun was steadily breaking through. Hyderabad were playing Rajasthan in the first round of the 2010-11 Ranji Trophy Plate League. Hrishikesh Kanitkar, the Rajasthan captain, won the toss and elected to field. Little did he know that his decision would lead to a headline-making sequence of events that would leave an indelible mark on Hyderabad cricket's history. Debutant Deepak Chahar, son of an air force employee, was given the new ball. Chahar, a right-arm seamer, charged in to carve through the Hyderabad batting and finish with figures of 7.3-2-10-8, forcing Hyderabad to capitulate for 21. It was a tournament record for the lowest team total and matched the Indian first-class record. Seventy-eight minutes. That was how long Hyderabad's first innings lasted. "We were just sitting in the dressing-room and we did not know what to do. It happened so quickly," Syed Quadri, one of Hyderabad's senior players, says. Ibrahim Khaleel, the Hyderabad keeper, describes the sequence of events: "For the first few overs we were fine. Then we lost a wicket. Nothing extraordinary. Then Akshath [Reddy], Anirudh [singh], Ravi Teja, and Arjun [Yadav] got out in succession. Suddenly I realised I was walking out to bat. It was the craziest dream; from 10 for no loss or something [it was 7 for 0] we were 21 all out." Though there was some talk of picking themselves up, Quadri admits Hyderabad were "mentally down" going in to bat for the second time after Rajasthan had scored 403 in their first innings. "It is very tough to recover from such a situation," Khaleel says. With such a fragile mindset it was no surprise that Hyderabad were shot out for 126 on their second attempt, to give Rajasthan an innings victory and a bonus point that began a wonderful journey for them, which would culminate in them lifting the Ranji Trophy crown for the first time. The repercussions for Hyderabad were immediate. Venkatapahy Raju, the coach, and Vivek Jaisimha, the batting coach, stepped down. Under pressure from the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), the selectors dropped four players for the rest of the season: Arjun Yadav, Anirudh Singh, MP Arjun and Anoop Pai. These men were good friends with the other squad members. Suddenly no player was sure about his place in the side. MV Sridhar was appointed interim coach and a wounded Hyderabad recovered enough to pick up three points for the first-innings lead in their next match, against Jharkhand, and then score an outright victory against Tripura. But in a crucial match against Goa, they failed to take the first-innings lead, which would have kept them in the reckoning for the Plate semi-finals. Their final group match, against Madhya Pradesh, was curtailed by rain and both teams shared a point each as Hyderabad finished fourth in the group standings. For the 2011-12 season, the HCA looked for a full-time coach. Fortuitously, Sunil Joshi, the former India and Karnataka left-arm spinner, had decided to move into coaching and chose Hyderabad ahead of Andhra Pradesh and Baroda, the two other states who wanted to hire him. One reason Joshi preferred Hyderabad was because he had gone through the grind of slipping from the Elite group and then bouncing back from Plate when he played for Karnataka. It was a good challenge. The Laxman effect After Hyderabad were bowled out for 21 in Jaipur last year, Sunil Joshi, then still playing for Karnataka, called up VVS Laxman. Laxman confessed to Joshi that he was badly hurt. So, this season, after Joshi took over as coach of Hyderabad, Laxman started to communicate with him constantly. "He was in touch with me via Blackberry Messenger or phone," Joshi says. "He asked me how best he could motivate the team. He was always ready to provide inputs and help the players." Laxman had played with and against Joshi. He had never seen Joshi the coach. But Laxman was impressed with Joshi's organisational skills after witnessing them first hand when he travelled to Goa a couple of days after India's Mumbai Test match against West Indies. Laxman had a stiff back but he was willing to play if Joshi insisted. "He was ready to play but said it would be tough only because he was travelling early to Australia," Joshi says. "But the next day, after training, he sat with everybody, shared information and hosted a team dinner. Him being with the team had a bigger impact than him playing." According to Ibrahim Khaleel, the Hyderabad wicketkeeper, Laxman gave the players a lot of confidence just by being there. "He was very excited. He told us he had total faith in the team. The way we came back in the Assam game after losing the Maharashtra match really impressed him. He said that showed the quality of the players. 'Just believe in yourselves and you will win this game also' is what he told us." At the outset Joshi made it clear to the HCA and the selectors that they should not change the team throughout the season. "The players were not sure about their place in the team and that added extra pressure on them," Joshi says. The fear was each player would start playing for himself and not the team if he was insecure. "The best thing about Hyderabad this year is that we have barely changed our team through all the games," Khaleel says. "That was crucial as everybody had the confidence that the team management was backing them and the team would stay together for the six matches. As a player, if I know I am going to play all games regardless of if I perform or not it makes a difference." The best example of security leading to confidence is Arjun Yadav, whose match-turning century against Vidarbha in the Plate semi-finals helped Hyderabad qualify for the Elite group. Arjun, son of the former India offspinner Shivlal Yadav, returned this season after being dropped following the Jaipur debacle. In the five matches before the semi-final, he had scores of 43, 0, 1, 17, 3, 21 and 0 not out. Hyderabad needed someone to score a big hundred if they had to overhaul Vidarbha's 531 in around 170 overs at Jamtha. At 84 for 3, they looked vulnerable. By stumps on the third day they were 216 for 3 with Arjun unbeaten on 91 and Bavanaka Sandeep on 60. The only day Hyderabad had a meeting was after the third day's play. The team sat on the ground after stumps, and Joshi told them to keep their spirits high, especially after their games against Assam and Goa in the previous two rounds, which Hyderabad had won with bonus points. The plan for the final morning was to not look for runs, just preserve wickets. The idea was to play for the first fifteen overs without losing wickets. Yadav and Sandeep scored 35 more runs before Sandeep was caught behind. Yadav, too, departed before lunch. But Khaleel and Quadri walked in, determined to bat till the end. "We knew if we stayed at the wicket we could get the runs. Every over we got two or three runs with one big over once in a while and we were reaching the target," Khaleel said of an eventful fourth afternoon. About fifteen overs before the finish, Quadri was run out on 99, thus ending a valuable 130-run sixth-wicket partnership. Khaleel, too, departed with nine overs to go. "We were on the back foot for a moment," Khaleel says. But the lower-order pair of Pagadala Naidu and Lalith Mohan batted with tenacity to carry Hyderabad through to safety in the end, and though they did not go past Vidarbha's score they qualified by virtue of a better run-rate in their innings. Quadri, who missed out on what would have been his third century of the season, says the team's mindset had seen a sea change because of their confident coach. On the third evening, Joshi kept walking in and out of the room shared by Arjun and Quadri at the team hotel. "Karna hi hain, karna hi hain (you have to do it)" Joshi kept telling both men. Quadri says it had a positive effect on Arjun. "He did not get any scores in the first five matches, but the coach supported him and he got the crucial hundred in the semi-finals. You need to support a player during his bad times," Quadri says. Joshi was surprised at the pitch in Nagpur, describing it as a "beauty" because Vidarbha's tail managed to score nearly 200 runs including a century by their No. 9 Amol Jungade and a 72 by Akshay Wakhare, the No. 10. "If we bat sensibly, (make use of the) shorter boundaries and fast outfield, we should be able to pull this off," Joshi told his team. Another interesting thing Joshi did was to get the team to speak via Skype to Rajesh Venkatadri, a Bangalore-based mental conditioning coach, who Joshi had worked with closely for the last few years of his career. "It was a good distraction at least. Rajesh helped me to overcome certain things in the last three or four years of my career when he had worked with the Karnataka team," Joshi says. The best example of Joshi's positivity came during the embarrassing innings defeat at home against Maharashtra in Hyderabad's second game this season. Hyderabad had elected to bat on what turned out to be a pitch with unpredictable bounce. They were duly shot out for 124. Maharashtra then took a 60-run lead. Akshya Darekar, the leading wicket-taker from the Plate group, took 8 for 20 as Hyderabad were bundled out for 54 in their second innings. "We were all silent," Quadri says, describing the dressing-room after that game. "Joshi Sir came in and said 'come on, guys. It is time to laugh'. We were shocked. We have lost the match and he is telling us to laugh." Joshi remembers the incident well. "Team Hyderabad had lost and it was my responsibility. I told them we can only laugh. We can't change the course of the result now. If you laugh you come out of it and start preparing for the next game. If you sulk you cannot do that." Joshi's consoling words gave the team a boost. "After his speech we were confident that we can't play worse now. We could only get better," Quadri says. On January 2, Hyderabad will once again confront Rajasthan, this time in the Elite quarterfinals at Uppal. It could be a case of life coming full circle for Hyderabad. "We will always remember 21," Khaleel says. Joshi, though, is not bothered about revenge. "In my talks to the team I always tell them: the first stage is we can do it, the second is we shall do it, the third is we will do it," Joshi says. "We are still in the first stage."

[Feed]

Haryana hope it's third time lucky After bowing out to two of the more highly rated teams in the domestic circuit in the previous two years, Haryana are up against another of the heavyweights, Karnataka, in the quarter-finals this time More... Haryana hope it's third time lucky Siddarth Ravindran in Bangalore January 1, 2012 Despite making the Ranji Trophy quarter-finals three years in a row, Haryana aren't considered among the stronger teams in the competition. One of the main reasons for that is they don't dominate the league phase to progress, but are more likely to squeeze through by securing the final qualification place. This year they almost left it too late. Entering their final league match against Gujarat, they were in fifth place and even an outright victory wouldn't have guaranteed their place in the quarters. They then proceeded to concede the first-innings lead to Gujarat, before finally turning things around - first with a solid batting effort and then rolling over Gujarat for 160, the lowest they have bowled out an opposition all season. The comeback win pushed Haryana a point above Baroda, who lost their final match against Bengal and with it a seemingly nailed-on place in the quarters. Haryana captain Amit Mishra says even midway through that Gujarat game, the belief was high in the squad. "We knew all our bowlers were performing well," he told ESPNcricinfo. "If we batted well in the second innings, we knew we had a chance." Making things even more challenging this season for Haryana were the large-scale changes to the side - astonishingly, they fielded five debutants in their opening Ranji game. The experienced professional, Hemang Badani, was left out for this campaign, and an accident to Joginder Sharma in November meant Mishra was the only well-known player in the squad. In addition to the responsibility of guiding this new-look team, Mishra also had to bounce back from the lows of the miserable tour of England which has, at least temporarily, halted his international career. "I was really disappointed to be left out of the Indian team. I just wanted to perform, whether it was for Haryana, or my company team or my club team," he said. "I was trying to improve all aspects of my game, whether it was the bowling, the fitness or the batting." After bowing out to two of the more highly rated teams in the domestic circuit in the previous two years - Mumbai in 2010-11, and Tamil Nadu last season - Haryana are up against another of the heavyweights, Karnataka, in the quarter-finals this time. Mishra, though, remained upbeat about Haryana's chances of progressing further in the competition. "It is a big game for us, even more so for some of the younger players in the team," he said. "When you reach this stage of the competition, you expect to play quality teams. We are confident of our abilities, and the main thing is being able to adapt quickly to the conditions." Karnataka are also not at full strength as they are missing the trio of fast bowlers -Vinay Kumar and Abhimanyu Mithun are in Australia with the Indian national team, and S Aravind is out with an injury - who were the bedrock of their formidable recent domestic record.

[Feed]

Madhya Pradesh banking on seamers While Mumbai's depleted attack might not seem threatening, they have the pedigree of Dhawal Kulkarni and Ramesh Powar to test MP, who are banking on TP Sudhindra and Ishwar Pandey to make inroads More... Madhya Pradesh banking on seamers Abhishek Purohit in Indore January 1, 2012 There was a time when your Ranji Trophy season used to be as good as over the moment you drew Mumbai in the knockouts. There was a time when teams were in awe of the 39-time champions. That awe has now been replaced by respect for their past deeds but teams today know that Mumbai are fallible, as Rajasthan showed last season. That the depleted Mumbai side facing Madhya Pradesh is almost unrecognisable from the formidable sides of the past is not lost on the hosts. Devendra Bundela, the MP captain, even said that they were "not taking Mumbai lightly." Such confidence might seem misplaced in a side in its first season in the Elite League in seven years but TP Sudhindra, MP's leading wicket-taker this season, had a more practical take on the issue. "Several of us have played with a lot of the Mumbai players in tournaments like the Times Shield. It is not like they are unknown to us." Familiarity with the Mumbai players has certainly helped but not as much as the self-belief that comes when you defeat established sides like Delhi and Gujarat. Both those wins came at the pace-friendly Emerald High School Ground on the outskirts of Indore. The pitch at the Holkar Stadium, the venue for the quarter-final, is known to be much better for batting. With a pace-dominated attack, there is no doubt over where the MP team would have preferred to play. But this is a knockout game and the Holkar Stadium had to be chosen as it has much better facilities. The change in venue might just suit MP's batsmen though. The outstanding performance of their new-ball pair of Sudhindra and Ishwar Pandey - with 57 wickets between them - and the form of Naman Ojha have allowed them to carry an underperforming batting unit. Only Bundela, apart from Ojha, has managed more than 300 runs this season. More than half of Mohnish Mishra's 263 runs came in his crucial hundred against Bengal. Mukesh Sahni, the coach, admitted that his batsmen have not clicked together. "It's not that they have not made runs," Sahni said. "But when one of them has scored, the others haven't and so on. All of them have been hitting the ball well in the nets. But scoring runs in the middle is different. I have been telling them, 'this is the moment. All of you have to come good in this game.'" While Mumbai's depleted attack might not seem threatening, they have the pedigree of Dhawal Kulkarni and Ramesh Powar to test MP, who are banking on Sudhindra and Pandey to make inroads. "Medium-pace bowling is our strength," Bundela said. "Our bowlers have taken wickets both at home and away." Sudhindra said that while making the semi-finals by getting past a side like Mumbai would be very satisfying, it would pale in comparison if MP actually manage to win the Ranji Trophy for the first time.

[Sir john]

3rd Quarter-Final: Madhya Pradesh v Mumbai at Indore, Jan 2-5, 2012 Madhya Pradesh banking on seamers

There was a time when your Ranji Trophy season used to be as good as over the moment you drew Mumbai in the knockouts. There was a time when teams were in awe of the 39-time champions. That awe has now been replaced by respect for their past deeds but teams today know that Mumbai are fallible, as Rajasthan showed last season. That the depleted Mumbai side facing Madhya Pradesh is almost unrecognisable from the formidable sides of the past is not lost on the hosts. Devendra Bundela, the MP captain, even said that they were "not taking Mumbai lightly." Such confidence might seem misplaced in a side in its first season in the Elite League in seven years but TP Sudhindra, MP's leading wicket-taker this season, had a more practical take on the issue. "Several of us have played with a lot of the Mumbai players in tournaments like the Times Shield. It is not like they are unknown to us." Familiarity with the Mumbai players has certainly helped but not as much as the self-belief that comes when you defeat established sides like Delhi and Gujarat. Both those wins came at the pace-friendly Emerald High School Ground on the outskirts of Indore. The pitch at the Holkar Stadium, the venue for the quarter-final, is known to be much better for batting. With a pace-dominated attack, there is no doubt over where the MP team would have preferred to play. But this is a knockout game and the Holkar Stadium had to be chosen as it has much better facilities. The change in venue might just suit MP's batsmen though. The outstanding performance of their new-ball pair of Sudhindra and Ishwar Pandey - with 57 wickets between them - and the form of Naman Ojha have allowed them to carry an underperforming batting unit. Only Bundela, apart from Ojha, has managed more than 300 runs this season. More than half of Mohnish Mishra's 263 runs came in his crucial hundred against Bengal. Mukesh Sahni, the coach, admitted that his batsmen have not clicked together. "It's not that they have not made runs," Sahni said. "But when one of them has scored, the others haven't and so on. All of them have been hitting the ball well in the nets. But scoring runs in the middle is different. I have been telling them, 'this is the moment. All of you have to come good in this game.'" While Mumbai's depleted attack might not seem threatening, they have the pedigree of Dhawal Kulkarni and Ramesh Powar to test MP, who are banking on Sudhindra and Pandey to make inroads. "Medium-pace bowling is our strength," Bundela said. "Our bowlers have taken wickets both at home and away." Sudhindra said that while making the semi-finals by getting past a side like Mumbai would be very satisfying, it would pale in comparison if MP actually manage to win the Ranji Trophy for the first time.

[zaheer]

Karnataka are 41/3

[Sir john]

3rd Quarter-Final: M. Pradesh v Mumbai at Indore hope MP wins. p.s mod peoplz don't merge this before match result.i openend this for my team MP.:desiman:

[nsareen]

Mohit Sharma from haryana bowling @136kmph , does anyone know who is he , since when is he playing, not very tall, but has a good action, and is pretty nippy.

[nsareen]

Harshal patel @ 130kmph but does look a bit nippier than 130, because of his quick run up and action. has a 5fer against karnataka, very well done. remember him bowling with Unadkat in the U19 world cup, seems to have put on a couple of yards from the U19 days