Vidarbha, captained by Faiz Fazal, recorded its first Ranji Trophy win since being founded as a cricket team in 1957. Here’s a look at the champions of the Ranji Trophy since 1957-58:
Knockout appearances
Vidarbha does not figure much in the list of teams that reached the Finals* or Semi-finals* (they reached the Ranji finals only this year) since 1957-58.
*These include Plate finals and semifinals.
To understand the rarity and surprise element in Vidarbha’s victory, we try to find out who among the previous Ranji winners were truly an underdog. In order to do so, we measure an “Underdog Index” for each Ranji winner.
Underdog Index
We look at the round-robin/league performance (prior to knockout stages) of each Ranji team every season and assign overall points to their seasonal performance. The performance points are calculated as follows –
A win in a Ranji Test is allotted 6 points, a draw with a first innings lead is allotted 2 points, a draw with a trailing score is allotted 1 point and zero points are allotted for a loss. For example, in the 2017-18 season, Vidarbha played six games, won four, lead after the first innings in one drawn Test and trailed in another. So the tally for Vidarbha this season were calculated as 4*6 + 1*2 + 1*1 = 27 performance points.
We then looked at the cumulative number of games played by each team (A) in all prior and current seasons they played, and the cumulative number of performance points in all seasons (B), for every season. We then calculated the Underdog Index for the winner of that season as B divided by A. Lesser the Underdog Index, greater is the surprise value or the rarity of the team becoming the champion, based on prior record.
Continuing our Vidarbha example – the team had played 257 round-robin games (A) and had garnered 434 performance points (B) from 1957-58 to 2017-18. Its Underdog Index was 434/257 = 1.69. A look at the top ten Ranji champions with the lowest Underdog Index is below:
It turns out that Gujarat’s win in 2016-17 was more unexpected than Vidarbha’s victory this year.
Since 1957-58, Gujarat had reached the finals only twice (and one of them was a Plate Final against the Railways in 2007-08). Captained by Patel, the team that won the Ranji in 2016-17 has now provided two players to the current Indian Test team - Parthiv himself and Jasprit Bumrah.
Punjab, helmed by Gursharan Singh, also recorded its only Ranji Trophy triumph in 1992-93, helped largely by opener Vikram Rathour’s run making and left arm spinner Bharati Vij, who topped the wicket takers list that season.
Rajasthan’s consecutive triumphs in 2010-11 and 2011-12 were also among the least expected Ranji Trophy victories.
