The Z.R. Irani Cup may have lost its zeal as the final stepping stone towards earning the India cap but the annual fixture between the Ranji Trophy champion — Vidarbha this year — and Rest of India — led by Karun Nair — starting on Wednesday will draw curtains on yet another gruelling domestic season.
Vidarbha, which bagged its maiden Ranji crown in January, should have an edge over a star-studded RoI outfit due to two major factors: home advantage of the Vidarbha Cricket Association stadium at Jamtha and the inclusion of India speedster Umesh Yadav.
“Our first objective was to win the Ranji Trophy. We have achieved that. Then we were hoping to go into the Irani tie with a full-fledged squad. Even that’s happened,” Vidarbha captain Faiz Fazal said after his team’s last pre-match training of the season.
“The most important target now is to win the Irani Cup. We have thoroughly earned our chance to be up against a quality Rest of India side and we are all geared up for this game.”
RoI players, meanwhile, would be more focussed on sealing a spot in the India-A line-up for the off-season tours and take another stride towards an international call-up.
Unlike last year, the national selectors have preferred to test the second rung rather than giving Test match regulars a hit against the Ranji champ. So, barring captain Karun Nair and offie Jayant Yadav and R. Ashwin none of the others has Test-match experience.
It will be interesting to see if RoI openers Mayank Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw continue their impressive run. Agarwal, having tallied more than 2,000 runs in the domestic season across formats, will be gunning to shed his dejection at having been ignored for India’s ongoing tri-series in Sri Lanka.
Shaw, on the other hand, will be hoping to repeat the heroics of his Mumbai senior Sachin Tendulkar of marking his Ranji, Duleep Trophy and Irani debuts with a three-figure score.
The squads: Vidarbha: Faiz Fazal (Capt.), R. Sanjay, Wasim Jaffer, Ganesh Satish (Vice-capt.), Apoorv Wankhede, Siddhesh Wath, Akshay Wadkar (wk), Aditya Sarvae, Akshay Karnewar, Akshay Wakhare, Karn Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Rajneesh Gurbani, Yash Thakur, Aditya Thakare, Atharva Taide.
Rest of India: Karun Nair (Capt.), Prithvi Shaw, Abhimanyu Easwaran, R. Samarth, Mayank Agarwal, G. Hanuma Vihari, K.S. Bharat (wk), R. Ashwin, Jayant Yadav, Shahbaz Nadeem, Anmolpreet Singh, Siddharth Kaul, Ankit Rajpoot, Navdeep Saini, Atit Sheth.
