Bengaluru
Mumbai – 120 all out. Jammu and Kashmir reduced to 174 for 7 at stumps in the same Ranji Trophy game. Vidarbha ended up with just 165 while Rajasthan could muster 101 for 5 at stumps. Madhya Pradesh were snuffed out for 160 against Kerala. Meanwhile, Haryana were cleaned up for just 157 by Bengal. Last, but not least, Punjab finished up with their lowest-ever Ranji Trophy total (55) while facing Karnataka. With most of those low scores, there was one connecting point – grassy decks that tend to stay low.
Now, the main argument in favour of such tracks would be that it acts as the foundation stone for the young batters to prepare for future challenges outside of Asia. Unfortunately, most of these pitches stay on the lower side, so the conditions aren’t exactly replicated. For instance, on Day 1 itself, the Mumbai-Jammu and Kashmir game witnessed 8 of the batters losing their wickets via the LBW or bowled modes of dismissal. One more example would be the Bihar-Bengal game held last season where out of Mukesh Kumar’s 10 wickets, six of them came via lbw or bowled.
The batters also wouldn’t get the opportunity to build their muscle memory of playing on turning decks. Sometimes, it is difficult to blame a batter like Sarfaraz Khan when he gets out in a curious fashion to Mitchell Santner, in Pune, as a sizeable portion of the decks in India’s premier first-class competition favour seam bowling.
Such conditions also bring into play military medium pacers who bowl at around 120 kph. All that a pacer needs to do in such climes is to zoom the ball on the stumps and wait for the pitch to do the rest. It could also result in very little old-ball swing and the spinners wouldn’t have much of a role. It shouldn’t come as a major surprise that since the emergence of Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah, India have kind of struggled to produce pace bowlers who have fine-tuned the art of using the crease and generating old-ball swing.
Former India spinner Harbhajan Singh had once said this about tracks in the Ranji Trophy. “We shouldn’t leave so much grass where even a 120-kph bowler appears like Malcolm Marshall,” he was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. “It is okay if someone bowling 120 looks like 125 but he shouldn’t appear unplayable. Our wickets make such bowlers look unplayable.”
Ironically, the track that had only a smattering of grass in the latest round of Ranji Trophy – Chinnaswamy – saw Punjab being shot out for just 55, which also turned out to be their lowest score in the tournament’s history. So, what went wrong there? A substantial portion of the batters were tentative as they kept edging deliveries to the slip cordon.
It is true that the deck offered just enough nip in the first hour. And a little more bounce than expected. The Karnataka pace trio of V Koushik, Abhilash Shetty and Prasidh Krishna also hardly gave anything away. Prasidh consistently extracting a fair amount of bounce from a slightly fuller length might have also gladdened the hearts of the Indian backroom staff. But Karnataka’s pace battery was also helped by some poor batting.
Shubman Gill, the star attraction, was one of them: His airy-fairy poke resulted in his dismissal for just four runs. Karnataka put Punjab’s insipid effort into perspective by notching up 199 for the loss of only four wickets at stumps.
From the above-mentioned lines, it could be asserted that not all of those low totals were due to the conditions. But the Karnataka-Punjab game seems more like an exception to the rule. The larger picture remains the same – A plethora of decks in the Ranji Trophy comprise a good covering of grass and tend to stay on the lower side. Is it helping in grooming the youngsters coming through the junior ranks? Perhaps not.
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