Thoughts on Ranji Final

[kabira]

1) First of congrats to groundsman, prepared very good quality pitch, helped seamers, decent bounce, good for batting if you apply yourself, also had bit for spinners. 2) This is first time I have seen good coverage of Ranji. DD used to show games live, but with one or two camera. This was by far best coverage I have ever seen for Ranji game. 3) Indian Domestic Cricket has lot of potential if marketed really well. 4) Mumbai again showed why its always strong contender to win Ranji. There is big pool of players to choose from and there is big competition. The likes of Kambli, Indulkar, Mane, Kulkarni were absent and still team was formidable one. 5) Bengal had quite a few mediocre players. The likes of A. Das, Sourav Sarkar, Shukla would find it difficult to play for Mumbai. Ganguly bowled better than Sarkar. 6) Inspite of few mediocre players, Bengal fought hard. If they had managed to hold their catches, couple of half chances, this game would have been quite close. I was mighty impressed with Manoj Tiwary and also doggedness of Deep Dasgupta. Than there was dada, who had scores to settle against Zaheer. 7) Zonal competition should be encouraged and should be made premier competition. Instead of grouping the zones, it should be played round robin basis, this will help us to find international quality players.

[Guest BossBhai]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final -- Removed on request of the user --

[kabira]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final crowd was not that great.. Ganguly got bigger cheers than Sachin... :hic:

[apocalypse]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final I think that Bengal had an outside chance when Tiwary and Ganguly were batting in the second innings. There was no need for the kind of shots they played. Zaheer bowled really well in the match alongwith Agarkar.

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final

1) First of congrats to groundsman, prepared very good quality pitch, helped seamers, decent bounce, good for batting if you apply yourself, also had bit for spinners. 7) Zonal competition should be encouraged and should be made premier competition. Instead of grouping the zones, it should be played round robin basis, this will help us to find international quality players.

Ok, so let us use this thread to get your views about what should be done to improve the structure of domestic cricket in India. Ranji Trophy Elite group has 15 teams which are at least 7 too many, in my view. This has resulted in diluting the strength of the teams and most of the teams have just 2-3 good players and some don't have even that. Plus, few good players in the plate group never get to compete against other good players and good teams, hence they go almost unnoticed. An example is Yashpal Singh from Services. So I quite like the idea that zonal tournament, ie, Duleep Trophy should be our premier domestic FC tournament, played on the round-robin. And there is no doubt that we need good wickets to produce good cricketers, be it a batsman or bowler. Here are few articles which are suggesting how the domestic cricket structure should be revamped: Revamping domestic cricket I like this idea. A three-tier domestic system is the need of the hour I don't agree with this idea. Your ideas folks?

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final No views? Well, sad!! I thought we can have some constructive discussion here!

[kabira]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final 3 tier domestic championship is not a way to go..They moved from one tier to two tier..and its good enuf at the moment. What we need to do is promote Duleep Trophy more than Ranji... Have 8 teams zone wise. 1) South/West Zone- Maharashtra, Bombay, Goa 2) West Zone- Baroda, Gujarat, Saurashtra 3) East Zone- Bengal, Bihar, Orissa etc 4) North Zone- Punjab, Kashmir, Haryana etc. 5) South Zone I- Hyderabad, Kerala, Andhra 6) South Zone II- Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, etc 7) One more zonal team 8) Invite strong A team from other countries. Play round robin, each team playing against other instead of grouping them. This will be really strong competition.

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final Three south zone teams? It won't happen because the other zones wouldn't agree. Besides, isn't it making the format even more complicated. I had liked the idea suggested in the article, 'Revamping domestic cricket'. But instead of having an U-19 team, I would like NCA to give us an Academy team of the players being trained there in the previous year. This way NCA will be active again and will be able to see directly what impact those training have on the young players, and hence improve even more, subsequently. But one of the fans was of view that being a zonal player won't invoke as much pride in a player as being from a particular state. Valid point I'd say. But once we start having Duleep trophy as our premier tournament, this will eventually come because it'll be one step further up from representing a state. Your views?

[kabira]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final >But one of the fans was of view that being a zonal player won't invoke as much pride in a player as being from a particular state. Not any more..goal is to perform..and play for country...Zaheer had not problem playing for Mumbai...he played all his life for Baroda...Similarly Rohan hailing form Mumbai, takes pride in playing for Bengal. To make our domestic competition stronger, lesser and stronger team is way to go.

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final Ok. Does anyone have another idea about how make our domestic structure strong and competitive so that players who come to international arena wouldn't feel that it was too high a jump for them to manage? Please give your ideas.

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final Your thoughts Ravi?

[King]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final I have a lot of comments to make about Indian domestic cricket. It has a fantastic structure and is one of the best in the world but that said there is still room for improvements IMO. Please bear with me about this huge post. 1. Probably cut down the number of teams that compete right now down to about 6 at the top. That will give 6 good teams at the top competing against each other more frequently. When you have far too many teams in a league you get a lot of below average players considering a lot of good players either will be away playing international cricket or as usual will be resting. 2. Get the ones representing the country to play more for their respective domestic teams. We saw how much a Tendulkar, Ganguly and Zaheer could expose the average or below average ones. Also it brings to fore the better players. I really think the BCCI should ensure that they make up the fixtures in such a way that the seniors don't usually miss out playing for their domestic team. 3. I think India has one of the best domestic structures with the likes of Duleep Trophy, Ranji Trophy, Deodhar trophy, Challenger trophy et al. This helps a player early on to get used to different formats of the game. 4. Indian cricketers these days are a lot more professional than the yesteryear cricketers. These guys now show more competitiveness and they seem to have been coached quite well at domestic level. Most seem to have that good cricketing skill. I can't really single out bad players that have turned up for India for a while. These lads are good enough to play international cricket but what I suppose they lack is the mental strength to cop with failures and deliver when the need be. It just doesn't happen overnight and this skill has to be learnt over a period of time. I don't think India should keep pushing the 18 years olds every year particularly untested in domestic cricket. They should let these young ones harden a bit in the domestic circuit before they get picked for international cricket. 5. Also introduce some professional trainers and coaches at the domestic level. I know there are few decent coaches at the domestic levels already but not every domestic team can afford a good one. I think they should be allowed to hire few good professionals from around the world. BCCI instead of locking away the profits in a fixed deposit should provide a bit of money to each centers for causes such as this. 6. For heaven's sake someone set up an academy in smaller centers in India. Why does only a big center such as Bangalore get all the goodies while the smaller cricketing centers don't get enough attention? BCCI should start spending a bit more outside of these big cities. Although the sport is widely followed by the Indian public, very few take up playing grass root level cricket i.e club cricket. Unless BCCI starts spending more towards grass root level cricket it will be hard to unearth a lot of cricketing talent that is present in India through out. I don't think the club cricket is as professional in the rural areas or say country side. The BCCI should strengthen the grass root level and surely there will be players with a lot more caliber than the ones that are available. From what I know England has more club cricketers than India. That simply is not on, India with its sheer size and following should have a heaps more grass root cricketers than anywhere in the world but that surely isn?t the case right now. Everyone follows cricket yes but do they go out and play club cricket? I guess not, they go out and play on the streets with a tennis ball but that doesn?t take a cricketer anywhere does it? It can?t be stressed enough the grass root cricket around the country and not just major cricketing centers should be improved. 7. Why not start showing domestic cricket on a more popular channel in India and also overseas? I'm sure whatever they can make out of selling such rights will be good enough money to start spending on grass root cricket. 8. Train the domestic and the upcoming young cricketers to handle the media. These lads seem to unable to come to grip with all the adulterations these days and go around making statements every other day. Most seem to conduct very well but seems like they love the media glare. It should be better managed. 9. Pick the top 4 to 6 teams from the domestic cricket and send them overseas to play against the domestic sides overseas during their season. This will help bust the boredom during off season of a lot of domestic cricketers and also will help them acclimatize to weather, pitch conditions overseas. By the time Indian domestic season finishes the rest of the world will still be involved with their domestic cricket and it will help these players immensely if they are provided opportunity to lock horns with their future counterparts.

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final Ravi, Before I proceed to respond to other points of your posts, how will you reduce the 27 teams to just 6? Do you have any idea? Did you read the articles that I posted? How did you like those ideas?

[King]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final Pick the top 6 this year i.e the 4 semi finalists + the next two. The other 21 can be reduced to 2 tier system. The top 2 teams from each tier get to tour overseas during winter and that will be a good enough incentive for a lot of them to do well. To be honest there is nothing wrong in having 3 tier system. Club cricket given the number of players in most countries have more than one tier. Usually you will have few teams from each club entering their teams. Considering the number of domestic cricketers and teams there is nothing wrong in having a 3 tier system. IMO for some of the players to make it to the top it will take a while but that will ensure the players fight it out through out. I know if a player ends up in a good enough team in say tier 3 cannot convince a selector of his ability but that said there should be exchanges allowed which will ensure the best players will always end up playing in the top tier. It could mean that a particular center such as Mumbai may end up buying the best of the players but that also has an advantage. The local domestic cricket body will push a lot of their senior international players to make more appearance. Lest the local domestic board members will for once do some work than just enjoying goodies. Lot of good points in one of the article you posted Chandan but that also suggests the lower teams should bore the brunt of not getting to play in good cricketing centers and at international venues which I'm not happy with. There should be no discrimination and if the senior players visit the lesser centers it can generate a lot of interest for the sport in the lesser centers. BTW to create and perform under pressure, just match conditions and good opponent is not just enough. There needs to be a large enough crowd that are at the top of their voice. This can't be staged but if BCCI allow free entry for all the domestic games and the senior cricketers turn up frequently it may produce some amount of pressure.

[Chandan]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final Your system seems to be a bit complicated which will make it hard to follow. Plus while India has an off season, only England is the country where domestic cricket goes on. Englad already has the problem of having 18 counties and they'll certainly not welcome another team or two to further dilute their competition. But it is the club cricket part which fascinates me. Obviously, we get players from school level going to college level to age level to club level to FC level. So obviously club level is the most important part. But I have no idea about various cricket clubs in India apart from CCI. I live in Delhi, yet I don't have any idea about how many clubs this state has to choose its players from. Does anyone have an idea?

[King]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final

Your system seems to be a bit complicated which will make it hard to follow. Plus while India has an off season, only England is the country where domestic cricket goes on. Englad already has the problem of having 18 counties and they'll certainly not welcome another team or two to further dilute their competition.

I don't quite know why it will make it hard to follow. Instead of 2 tiers you will have to follow 3 tiers. I didn't mean the 4 top domestic teams should engage in domestic competetions overseas. I was saying these guys could be arranged to play one or two domestic sides and A sides. It doesn't have to be a full fledged tour but it should be limited to couple of 4-5 dayers and about 5 ODIs.

But it is the club cricket part which fascinates me. Obviously, we get players from school level going to college level to age level to club level to FC level. So obviously club level is the most important part. But I have no idea about various cricket clubs in India apart from CCI. I live in Delhi, yet I don't have any idea about how many clubs this state has to choose its players from. Does anyone have an idea?

Clubs in India are dime a dozen. When I played my club cricket we had about 5 divisions in Bangalore. Everyone including the likes of Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid and the rest played club cricket before they played for their respective domestic sides. Usually the domestic sides will consist of 1st XI and a 2nd XI. The players for these teams are primarily choosen from club sides. Anyone that does well in the club sides will usually make the cut. School cricket is good for young ones but the university cricket is not considered as big as club cricket. Every cricketer goes through his grind in the club cricket. Club cricket usually will consist of some upcoming prodigies and some seasoned players. It makes a good introduction for the upcomign players in a competetive environment and the first hand taste of playing against "The Men". The club cricket structure is pretty much the same everywhere (Australia, New Zealand, England, India and the rest). I'm not sure about Pakistan considering their domestic structure is a scam. I don't know how well implemented is club cricket in rural India or in smaller centers. Every cricketer that plays international cricket will have played club cricket for sure. In fact the likes of Waugh brothers place a lot of loyalty in their club side. I know of a lot of Indian cricketers that turn up to play club cricket in places like England but they don't do that often in their home country.

[Predator_05]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final The best way to raise standards is to make a marketable product which appeals to people. I think it would be best if the BCCI takes a leaf out of the hockey federation's book and starts up a cricketing equivalent of the Premier Hockey League. This measure has done so much to enhance hockey's popularity, and it's success is reflected in the impressive crowd turnouts all across the country. Rebranding teams with names like "Delhi Dazzlers, Sher-e-Punjab, Bangalore Lions" etc. and allowing for corporate sponsorship (many clubs have sponsors now) has made it a true revelation in the Indian sports industry. In addition to this, ESPN have bought the rights and do proper pre-game/post-game shows with ex-players, highlight reels and all and have made watching the games worthwhile. You even see the best hockey players from all across the world coming to play in the PHL, and that will do wonders for the development of the game at grass roots level and will raise standards. If a sport on the wane like hockey could generate such success by revamping it's domestic structure completely, imagine what a far more popular sport like cricket could do. It's a potential gold-mine, but nobody has exploited it yet.

[kabira]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final exactly Predator..ESPN has done tremendous job in enhancing Hockey Image in the country..

[Birbal2]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final But Indian Hockey QUALITY is as ROCK BOTTOM at the present time...

[shailesh]

Re: Thoughts on Ranji Final saw some coverage of CEAT awards in the news. It was good to see coverage given to domestic players with awards, official rankings and there was even a domestic XI picked consisting of the best players in the country this season. Things like these will no doubt encourage the players and also increase the interest in domestic games. :wtg: