As expected, the domestic teams’ captains and coaches made no bones about asking for the reversal of last year’s Ranji Trophy neutral venue concept to the tried and tested home-and-away format, during the annual conclave held at the Wankhede Stadium premises on Tuesday.
But the two-hour-long meeting, attended by a plethora of domestic stalwarts and members of the BCCI and court-appointed Committee of Administrators, also dissected various aspects of a possible increase in match-fee of domestic cricketers.
Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh had set the ball rolling by requesting India head coach Anil Kumble to pitch for a revision of mode of payment to domestic cricketers.
While Harbhajan skipped the meeting, the other stalwarts, including Uttar Pradesh captain Suresh Raina, Gujarat’s Parthiv Patel, Baroda’s Irfan Pathan, Chhattisgarh captain Mohammad Kaif and Karnataka captain R. Vinay Kumar, are understood to have asked for a revision of match-fee as well.
Domestic cricketers’ match-fee structure is proportionate to the BCCI’s income, excluding what is derived from the ICC and IPL. While requesting the BCCI officials to include all steams of income under the BCCI income umbrella, some of the Ranji team captains also sought parity between India’s domestic cricketers’ match-fee and those from Australia and England.
Financial security
The BCCI officials feel unless the State associations start offering annual contracts to its cricketers, it would be difficult for domestic cricketers to get a fillip when it comes to financial security.
A majority of coaches and captains requested the BCCI to revert to the home-and-away format for the Ranji Trophy, detailing the reasons why the neutral venue theme didn’t work. Some of the team representatives from the lower rungs of the Ranji Trophy supported the experiment.
The suggestions will now be passed on to the technical committee, headed by Sourav Ganguly who couldn’t attend the meeting.
There was a proposal from the BCCI that with the home associations tinkering with wickets, the BCCI may appoint curators to prepare pitches even if it reverts to home-and-away format.
A view was also expressed to do away with the toss and offer the visiting team the choice of batting or fielding to negate the home advantage.
‘Educative, interesting’
While CoA member Ramachandra Guha termed the conclave “educative and interesting”, BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary said the captains and coaches had an open discussion on all aspects, especially the pros and cons of the neutral venue experiment.
“There were views supporting both formats.
“Instead of making a calculation of how many people were on which side, the points made to substantiate a certain position have been collated and will be brought to the working committee and the general body.” said Choudhary.
Several captains demanded stricter checks and balances on umpires’ appointment for big matches.
Besides, the captain and coaches were vociferous in asking for restoring the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy to an inter-State all-India knockout event. The inter-zonal knockout leg, tried out for the 2016-17 season, turned out to be a farce.
It was also pointed out that the gap between Ranji matches during the league stage should be increased to at least four days all through the season.
It was also suggested that converting the Ranji Trophy league from the existing three-tier system (9 + 9 + 10) to four tiers of seven teams each, will add breathing space in the calendar.
Delhi unrepresented
Delhi was the only team that went unrepresented because the coach K.P. Bhaskar was given wrong information about the date and venue by the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).
