Home improvement

In India the Ranji Trophy is supposed to be a player's stepping stone to international cricket. But as things stand, it's one hell of a step. To take two broad parallels, the gulf between Indian domestic cricket and international cricket is wider than that between Roger Federer and the rest in tennis, or Tiger Woods and the rest in golf.

For years India have relied on natural talent, and not on the system, to feed their national team. It is a tribute to their inherent skills and strength of character that players like Mahendra Singh Dhoni have seamlessly made the step up to international cricket: the Indian domestic set-up does very little to prepare them for the big arena. Even Under-19 players often have more exposure to competitive cricket than somebody who has been playing in the Ranji Trophy for five or six years.

Over the last few years the BCCI has tried to make the domestic game more competitive by dividing the national league into the Elite and Plate groups, and by re-laying pitches at most first-class centres. But however well intentioned these moves may have been, their effects have been merely cosmetic. India's premier domestic tournament continues to be drab, and consequently uncared for and largely unwatched.

Last season a few familiar themes cropped up. Twenty-seven of the 52 Ranji Trophy Elite Group matches ended in stalemates, including the final. Over-rates continued to be dismal - in the Duleep Trophy, 1531.4 overs were bowled in 7165 minutes, making it an over-rate of 12.5 per hour. Associations continued to prepare substandard tracks. Umpires and players kept complaining about the quality of balls, which went out of shape every time they hit the boundary boards, hurting the over-rates badly. One frustrated coach spoke of how standards that prevailed 25 years ago could not be accepted in 2006; others didn't bother.

That Indian domestic cricket needs a makeover is a given. Cricinfo Magazine spoke to a few insiders in an attempt to come up with an agenda for change.

Revamp the points system Draws can sometimes be compelling, but the existing points system in the Ranji Trophy encourages the dull variety, where often it becomes evident as early as on the first day of a game that teams are playing for first-innings points.

In an Elite Group league match last year, Haryana managed an eight-run lead over Punjab; the scores were 232 and 224. When Haryana batted second, they refused to push for a result. It wasn't that the pitch had become tough to play on, more that they were keen to protect their two points, which they would have lost if they had lost the match. One could hardly blame them, for while a win brings four points, there is no reward for getting a first-innings lead if the game is subsequently lost. Would Haryana not have showed a bit more urgency - they finally set Punjab a target of 392 from 70 overs - had they known they would not be deprived of their first-innings lead points if they lost the match?

"You need to provide incentive to win, not to lead on first innings," says Darren Holder, Maharashtra's director of cricket. Ajay Shirke, the president of the Maharashtra Cricket Association, goes a step further: "There should be a disincentive for not going for a win. How is a point of conjecture. I don't mind the Australian points system."

In Australia's Pura Cup, first-innings points are not taken away, irrespective of the final result. In England's County Championship points are given based on the size of the first-innings lead, and those points are similarly inviolable. The Pura Cup produced 23 results in 31 matches last season.

The argument against this points system hinges on the possibility of teams arranging matches. Two sides going into a match needing two and four points respectively could strike a pre-match agreement whereby the first team takes the first-innings lead and allows the other team to win the match.

Chandrakant Pandit, the former India wicketkeeper who has coached three Ranji teams, has an innovative solution to reduce the possibility of draws: a cap on the number of overs a team can bat. Aunshuman Gaekwad, former India player amd coach, and Gujarat coach, thinks there should be some points for a team that has trailed in the first innings too.

A mixture of the two approaches was used in the Asian Test Championship in 2001-02, and this could be an option for the Ranji Trophy. Bonus points were awarded in drawn games on the basis of runs scored and wickets taken in the first 100 overs in the first innings. The only other points a team could win were for outright wins, wins by an innings, or ties. This method was devised by Sunil Gavaskar, Zaheer Abbas, Ashantha de Mel, and Gazi Ashraf.

Play more matches Currently teams that don't make it into the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy play a maximum of seven matches. In Australia, with six teams, they play 10 matches each. In England, the number goes up to 17. "Seven matches are just too few for a professional cricketer," says Sanjay Manjrekar, who has led Mumbai. "They have to find a way to play more."

The obvious way is for each team to play every other twice, soccer-style, in home and away fixtures, or to not have groups at all. This, though, seems logistically difficult. Like Bengal captain and former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta says, "Imagine Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir in the same group. The amount of travelling just won't fit in the tight season we have." Then again, this has to do with the fact that many Ranji teams travel to games by train. With increased earnings from the BCCI, there is no reason why state associations can't afford flights.

Last season there were 59 days (including practice matches) of international cricket in India. The seven matches that comprise each Ranji Trophy Elite group round are staged simultaneously, which means the seven rounds of the league stages take only 28 days. Twice that number can surely be accommodated in a season that starts in November and ends in March. This way a team will get to play 14 matches even if it doesn't make it to the semi-finals. Playing home and away will also address the issue of home advantage.

Pandit advocates a super-league consisting of the eight best teams within each Ranji Trophy tier, who will fight it out among themselves for the championship in a league format. This will ensure more intense competition and easier scheduling. The eight teams in the super-league would play 14 games each, and the rest six to seven.

Harsha Bhogle, the writer and commentator, prefers to have only 10 teams in the Elite Group, instead of 15 as at present, so that they all get nine quality games each.

Make state associations accountable The Indian cricket board does not discriminate when handing out subsidies to state associations: as long as you have a vote, you are guaranteed your share of the booty, which has been growing in direct proportion to the BCCI's earnings.

Most associations reserve their enthusiasm for international matches that are staged at their grounds, rather than for the performance of their team in the Ranji Trophy. "I think associations should be penalised by some means for their team continually performing poorly," says Manjrekar.

Gaekwad proposes that the board stop giving subsidies to associations that are not doing enough to develop the game. VB Chandrasekhar, a national selector, and a member of the Tamil Nadu cricket administration, is realistic: "There is no common law governing the way these associations function. There are no standards. So, let's not get too idealistic about it." Positive incentives could be the other way. A proper grading of associations needs to be done, say, every six months. Associations that record improvements and draw big crowds over a certain period of time could be granted monetary bonuses, and perhaps even more matches in the next season.

Ranji over Duleep? The thought of scrapping the Duleep Trophy may be one that seems too radical to contemplate, but questions need to be raised about its usefulness and format. Ideally a zonal competition should have the best performing players of the season participating, but the timing of the Duleep Trophy - for the last couple of seasons it has been held before or during the Ranji Trophy; this year again, it will be played at the start of the season - has ensured that many of the top performers (such as UP's Praveen Kumar and Suresh Raina, Saurashtra's Sandip Maniar, and Mumbai's Amol Muzumdar, to take a few examples from last year) do not get to play in the tournament. A weak team from Zimbabwe further diluted the competition last year.

Holder questions the purpose of both the Duleep Trophy and the Challengers. Manjrekar thinks there is no pride in playing for, say, West Zone, as opposed to Mumbai.

"Playing Ranji before Duleep is my preference, if we have to play Duleep. My preference has been to play more state cricket than zone cricket," says Bhogle. Indeed, doing away with the Duleep Trophy would help fit more Ranji matches into the season.

Gaekwad, who has seen the Duleep Trophy in better days, remembers the pride involved in the matches between West Zone and South Zone in the 1970s, when "playing in the Duleep Trophy was a reward for having done well in Ranji. Now they pick players based on last year's numbers. Does any selector go and check which player is in good form? This also takes the edge out of Ranji because there is no higher incentive for playing it through the year."

Dasgupta, who played for East Zone, runners-up in last year's Duleep Trophy, feels there is pride involved, but not comparable to what there is in the Ranji Trophy. "In India, everything, and not just cricket, is divided into zones. For example, we always say X is a North Indian, Y is a South Indian. So one does want to prove his zone is better. But Duleep Trophy should be the step between Ranji and international." In fact that is exactly what the Duleep Trophy was used as in the 1970s: a selection tournament before a big tour.

Get the stars to play Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee, Michael Kasprowicz, Jason Gillespie, Stuart MacGill, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Michael Hussey, and Damien Martyn all managed to feature in the last Pura Cup. Gillespie played 11 matches, Kasprowicz eight, Hayden three, and Langer four. They could do so because there were only three Pura Cup matches each in December and January, the busy part of the international season. In India, from the Test team only Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, and Anil Kumble played in the Ranji Trophy - and they managed a total of four games between them.

Chandrasekhar has been with the current team for two years, and he knows that India team players do not mind playing domestic cricket. "But whenever there is so much as a seven-day break, the board arranges a tri-series tournament. If there are 10 free days before the Champions Trophy, we look for two other teams that are free and play with them."

Treat one-dayers with respect Last year the Ranji Trophy one-dayers - which can be money-spinners and crowd-pullers - were an abject example in how not to organise a tournament. All the teams from a zone were assembled at one place, and all the league matches played over nine days at the same ground.

"Our domestic one-day structure is pathetic," says Bhogle. "We need high-pressure state team contests. If we have 10 teams in the Elite group, each team would get nine one-day games, and that would test them in different conditions." If India were to follow this system, they could have preliminary qualifiers to choose the best 10 teams, making for a gripping limited-overs contest.

The new administration just may give the Ranji one-dayers a facelift - at this year's BCCI Annual General Meeting, coloured clothing and day-night matches were among the proposals - but it also needs to make sure that the competition is intense and that the games are played at a time when they can draw audiences, when people don't have international alternatives. Just before the start of the international season is a good time for the one-dayers to be played. This is where Holder's suggestion that the one-dayers be played in November and the four-day games start in late January gains weight. "Yeah, it's hot later on but everyone needs to toughen up... it's hot everywhere," he says. It certainly is hot in Australia in March when they conclude the season.

Take the game local Last year's Ranji Trophy semi-final in Mumbai, an interesting match result-wise, was watched by a handful of people, while more than a thousand turned up for the final, a boring draw, in Lucknow.

This has been the trend for many years now: a match in, say, Delhi does not evoke any interest, but one at a new centre gets huge crowds. "We had 6,000 people watching a Ranji Trophy match at Nashik," says a proud Shirke. The bigger centres are satiated with international cricket; the smaller ones want quality cricket.

The players, though, are generally not too excited about the idea of playing at smaller venues, and they have their reasons. Cricketers want quality facilities - a decent three-star hotel, proper food, a good gym, well-maintained pitch, outfield, and nets. The facilities at smaller venues such as Lucknow, or at the Karnail Singh Stadium and the Jamia Millia Islamia University Ground in Delhi, are not up to scratch. Upgrading infrastructure needs to be a priority.

It's not asking for much. Instead of trying to popularise cricket in Singapore and America, the BCCI should look at taking the game to places in India where interest is immense, and which are already throwing up enormous amounts of cricket talent.

Sell it "In India there is an international star, and a Ranji player. They are two completely different entities," says Bhogle. The gulf is vast. Companies queue up to pay money for branding space on the arms of international players' uniforms, while domestic teams have sponsors for virtually nothing.

It follows that the domestic game has to be marketed properly. Getting a broadcaster to sponsor the domestic tournaments, as has been done recently with Indian hockey, would not be a bad idea. The sponsor should take care of the apparel, reducing the cost for the associations, and thus ensuring standard apparel across the country. Each sponsor could possibly be asked to provide a certain proportion of funding to improve a particular aspect of domestic cricket.

By the time this article appears, the BCCI would have made a few positive, long-overdue changes. Starting this season, umpires, for the first time, may be subject to a proper monitoring process, and assessed by the BCCI on the basis of visual evidence, instead of captains' reports, the objectivity of which had always been under question. A TV deal has been struck, which will ensure 70 days of coverage of domestic cricket per year. Hopefully all this will be just the start.