How important is Ranji Trophy if you want to make Test cut?

10 of the last 25 Indian players to make a Test entry made it with less than 20 Ranji matches under their belt

Around 500 players across 32 state teams will be donning whites for the next ten weeks in India’s longest running domestic competition Ranji Trophy, which got underway on Friday. A 100 more players across 6 teams will also be in action for Plate Group honours. During pre-IPL days, breakthrough Ranji seasons would earn a ticket to Test cricket.

Mumbai team players exchange handshakes with each other after winning by an innings and 51 runs against the Bihar team during fourth day of the Ranji Trophy cricket match between Mumbai and Bihar, at Moin-ul-Haq Stadium in Patna (Pappi Sharma.)

From the current crop, Ajinkya Rahane, in 2013 was among the last few to have earned his Test cap purely on the strength of his 60 first class matches. Three years before, Cheteshwar Pujara had made it. Aged 22, he had already delivered four prolific domestic seasons.

Over the last decade or so in particular, with the advance of T20s, cricket’s grammar across formats has changed. So has the approach of the selectors towards scouting Test players. Ten of the most recent 25 players to have played for India earned their Test cap after 20 or less Ranji match experince.

To those who took longer, in almost all cases, their Ranji showings weren’t the only barometer. IPL success re-ascertains credentials. Even though the demands of the two formats are widely different, IPL’s higher standards help the selectors judge a player’s temperament.

Almost as a rule, before handing out Test debuts, India A matches work as an additional filter. How far back does one have to go, when a member of a Ranji trophy winning team earned a Test cap? 2015.

Shreyas Iyer made his India debut in 2021 and Suryakumar Yadav, last year. But it wasn’t for their contributions in Mumbai’s Ranji win which came way back in 2015.

Ranji Trophy season toppers – both with bat and ball – are unable to push their case. They play the Irani trophy, but no further. Only Jaydev Unadkat’s heroics of 2019-20 were acknowledged with a Test comeback. He could add only three more Tests to his career tally before being dropped.

Karnataka pacer Prasidh Krishna got his Test opportunity with only 9 Ranji trophy matches under his belt. His lack of red-ball experience may have showed up, but the thinking behind his selection was to draft a tall fast bowler who could extract bounce on South African pitches. Such horses for courses selection calls are now common with World Test Championship points at stake.

Prithvi Shaw, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant entered the Test arena with very little domestic experience. Their quality stood out at U19 World Cups, another selection route for a modern-day player. Once they began their IPL careers well, any doubts the selectors may have had were quelled.

FALLING STANDARDS

The playing pool is so vast, particularly in Ranji Trophy’s league phase that there are far too many favourable match-ups for an above-average player to cash in. These runs aren’t given the same weightage by the selectors. A classic case is Mumbai’s middle-order batter Sarfaraz Khan has scored a mountain of runs (2466 in three seasons) which are not helping him make the international cut. He hasn’t had a standout performance for India A yet and his IPL numbers don’t boost his case too.

The fall in standards of Ranji cricket has long been overlooked with overlapping A tours further depleting player availability. No effort is made to encourage established players' participation. Between Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Bumrah, Shreyas Iyer, Kuldeep Yadav, Pant, Mohammed Siraj, Axar Patel and Gill, the top India stars have featured in only 4 Ranji matches since they made their international debut.

International schedules have got increasingly punishing. But a narrow window for certain players to play domestic cricket on a case-to-case basis isn’t impossible to achieve with adequate planning. Ravindra Jadeja’s return to fitness after a long injury layoff went smoothly last year, only after he turned up and bowled long spells for Saurashtra in a Ranji trophy tie.

At a broader level, Ranji trophy still remains relevant. When the premier domestic tournament couldn’t be held during Covid, the feeder line to India A had dried up and it showed. When it came to Suryakumar Yadav getting an opportunity in Test cricket, his T20 fireworks may have driven his selection but his vast Ranji experience (73 matches before debut) also counted. Same was the case with Shardul Thakur - 45 Ranji matches before debut - who emerged as a stop-gap all-rounder for SENA conditions.