The Board of Control for Cricket in India technical committee’s recommendation to play the Ranji Trophy matches at neutral venue has startled many people involved in the administration of member units, but they have preferred to remain silent until they receive the notice and the recommendation is placed before the working committee.
The Mumbai Cricket Association’s jt. hon. Secretary, Dr. P. V. Shetty, has said the association has not received any communication from the BCCI and that he will have to discuss the matter with Dilip Vengsarkar, former India captain, vice-president, MCA and also the chairman of the cricket improvements committee (CIC).
“I have read about it in the newspapers and heard nothing from the BCCI,” said a secretary of a member association from South India. “Is it a wisecrack; is there any major league in the world of sports where there is no home match. On what basis does the committee feel that the Ranji Trophy will be more competitive when played at neutral venues,” asks a very angry senior Board official.
A recent BCCI’s press release said: “In a bid to make domestic cricket more competitive and rule out the issues related to preparing specific wickets for home teams, as well as to expose players to play in different conditions, the BCCI technical committee (has) recommended neutral venues for the Ranji Trophy matches. This is a step recommended to make domestic Ranji Trophy cricket more competitive.’’
Is the BCCI or its technical committee conveying a message that the Ranji Trophy matches played in the 2015-16 season has been far from competitive and that Mumbai’s title win for 41st time was a fluke or that Saurashtra, Vidarbha, Punjab, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam did not deserve to be in the quarterfinal.
The BCCI president, Anurag Thakur and Secretary Ajay Shirke said a number of times (from May 22 when Thakur was elected president and Shirke was nominated secretary) that they would be transparent and accountable and it was upon them to make a clean breast of what forced its technical committee to come up with such a drastic decision.
The release has touched upon “preparing specific wickets for home teams”. A pertinent question here is: How many Ranji Trophy matches have the members of the technical committee seen in 2015-16, raised pitch-related issues during the season, and given a detailed report. Or have they purely gone by a handful of match referee reports that would have perhaps given zilch or 1 in a scale of 0-4 for the quality of the pitch prepared for a particular match.
There were serious issues related to pitches being allegedly tinkered with by the Saurashtra Cricket Association and Tamil Nadu Cricket Association for a few home matches. A match referee revealed that the BCCI has the right to dock a penalty of two points in a match in the event of the pitch being described as “poor’’ or “very bad’’. Three years ago the BCCI banned the Railways home ground Karnail Singh Stadium, New Delhi for the 2012-13.
Recently when the Vidarbha Cricket Association was warned for preparing a “poor pitch” by match referee Jeff Crowe for the third Test between India and South Africa at the Jamtha Stadium, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the “Jamtha Stadium, Nagpur, has been given an official warning under the ICC Pitch Monitoring Process” and that Crowe had observed that the pitch did not allow a fair contest between bat and the ball.’’
The BCCI’s technical committee consists of Sourav Ganguly (chairman, Cricket Association of Bengal), Sidharth Verma (DDCA), R. Sudhakar Rao (Karnataka CA), Narendra Dua (Madhya Pradesh), Shrikant Kalyani (Maharashtra CA), Debashish Mohanty (former Test cricketer) and V. K. Ramaswamy (former Test umpire).
Ganguly played international cricket till 2008 and IPL till 2012; he is a distinguished former India captain and is closely associated with Bengal cricket. It can be assumed that he being CAB’s president, he cannot go against his own recommendation at the BCCI working committee. Similarly R. Sudhakar Rao represents Karnataka and South Zone has made it difficult for KSCA secretary Brijesh Patel to go against his own man.
Narendra Dua from Madhya Pradesh is 76 and played his last first class game 40 years ago and Sidharth Verma (Delhi, Haryana and Railways) has played 26 first class matches. The fifth zonal member is Srikant Kalyani, added last week because the original choice Riyaz Bhagwan did not qualify to be a member of the committee. V.K. Ramaswamy, 71, is the umpire representative and Mohanty has been fitted in as former Test cricketer.
“We play matches in districts and the crowd wants to see the State’s big players. We created the infrastructure in the State to spread the game and schedule Ranji Trophy matches in small centres,” said a secretary.
When Maharashtra played Tamil Nadu at Nashik some years ago, a big crowd saw Murali Vijay and Abhinav Mukund in action. It was much the same when Karnataka and Mumbai met in the Ranji final at Mysore. There were hardly any when Tamil Nadu played Karnataka in the Ranji final at the Wankhede two years ago and when Mumbai played Saurashtra at Pune this year.
