Ranji Trophy: Those looking forward to a return of the red ball
The premier domestic first-class tournament is back after a one-year hiatus. The Indian Express provides a snapshot of a few who can’t wait for it to resume
‘I am quickest in Kerala squad’Edhen Apple Tom (17, Kerala)
Edhen Apple Tom was not in the preliminary squad but would impress coach Tinu Yohannan with his pace as a net bowler for the team. (Express Photo)
Edhen Apple Tom was surprised when he was included in Kerala’s Ranji Trophy squad. The 17-year-old was not in the preliminary squad but would impress coach Tinu Yohannan with his pace as a net bowler for the team.
“It has been an excellent experience so far. Playing and training with the senior team is completely different from what I was used to with the U-19 team,” says Edhen.
Yohannan rates the teenager highly. “He is deceptively quick. looking at his body structure, one can’t say that he is sharp, but he will be bowling in the high 130s, and that’s why we picked him. During the Ranji Trophy camp, we found that he is ready for senior cricket. It is not only talent, but the kid has also got a very stable head and is hitting the right areas, which one need in first-class cricket,” says the Kerala coach who played three Tests for India.
Edhen was born in Dubai where his parents worked at the airport. After he turned eight, he and his father moved to India while the mother stayed in Dubai. “My father (Apple Tom Phillips) was a fast bowler himself. I was 8 when he took me to former Kerala all-rounder Sony Cheruvathur sir, who was running a coaching camp in Dubai. I used to bowl fast, but there were a lot of technical issues with my bowling. Sony Cheruvathur sir fixed all those issues, but never compromised with my pace, even when I was 9. I am not saying that I am the quickest in the Kerala squad, but I am fast for my age. I can bowl fast,” says Edhen, who idolises Dale Steyn.
About his unique name, the youngster says, “My great grandfather named my dad Apple Tom Phillips, and my grandfather who lived in Singapore named me Edhen.”
Pratyush Raj
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Dhoni told me, ‘Don’t overthink’Prashant Solanki (21, Mumbai)
Prashant Solanki with MS Dhoni. (Express Photo)
Prashant Solanki recalls the day he got a call from Chennai Super Kings (CSK) asking whether he would be available as a net bowler for the franchise in the UAE during IPL 2021. A few months later, CSK would bid Rs 1.2 crore for the 21-year-old Mumbai leg-spinner in the IPL auction.
“Shardul (Thakur) had spoken to CSK about me and they called me later to the nets. I bowled to Dhoni bhai and the other batsmen. They also made me bowl in a practice game. But I never thought they would pick me for their side,” Solanki said.
What did he learn from Dhoni? “I asked him about preparation and he told me, ‘just try to be simple and back your plan. Don’t get confused thinking too much. The biggest make any player does is they think too much at a time. It’s very important to do the things which you know the best.’”
Solanki was a batsman and medium-pacer during his early days. One day when he was playing with his father Hitesh, his coach saw him bowling leg-spin and insed that he continue with it. Leg-spin helped him play junior cricket for Mumbai and soon he grabbed attention after doing well in the Mumbai T20 League. He was the highest wicket-taker for Mumbai in the 2020-21 Vijay Hazare Trophy.
Now, he is set for his maiden Ranji Trophy season. “Red-ball cricket is the best, ball pakda toh aisa laga ke sab life mein normal ho gaya hai [When I held the ball, I felt everything had become normal in life]. Ranji was my ultimate goal. For this, I practise spot-bowling for hours. I’m hoping that before the IPL, I do well in the Ranji Trophy.”
Devendra Pandey
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‘Mein carom-varom ball nahi daalta’Saurabh Kumar (28, Uttar Pradesh)
Saurabh Kumar would pray that no one would pull the train chain as he left Baghpat for Delhi. Chain-pulling meant his daily practice session would take a hit. Saurabh’s father, a retired junior engineer in Akashvani, wanted his son to be a cricketer.
“It would take us two-and-a-half hours to reach Delhi. Three times a week, I would come to Sunita Sharma’s academy. My father used to do over-time to make sure he accompanied me to Delhi,” the 28-year old spin all-rounder said.
He was once spotted Bishan Singh Bedi, who took the budding left-arm spinner under his wing, and Saurabh’s journey began to take shape. He played for Uttar Pradesh in junior cricket but getting into the Ranji Trophy squad was tough. The state team had no place for him, so he played a season (2014-15) for Services before moving back to his home state.
A conventional left-arm spinner is rare in domestic cricket but Saurabh is one. In his first game for Uttar Pradesh, against Gujarat in 2015-16, he took 10 wickets. There was no looking back thereafter. He is also competent with the bat, having scored two first-class hundreds and eight fifties for an average of 29.11.
In the previous Ranji season, 2019-20, Saurabh took 44 wickets at 21.09. In 2018-19, he claimed 51 scalps to go with 19 wickets in the Duleep Trophy. These performances got him picked for the India A tour of South Africa last year.
He relies on the traditional tools of flight, dip and turn. “Mein ye carom-varom ball nahi daalta [I don’t bowl the carom ball]. I never liked it. I like to loop it and set up batsmen in the air.”With the Ranji Trophy resuming after two years, Saurabh will again look to deceive batsmen.
Devendra Pandey
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‘Living a dream’Nishant Sindhu (19, Haryana)
Nishant Sindhu’s unbeaten 50 against England in the U-19 World Cup final showed his big-match temperament.
Nishant Sindhu’s unbeaten 50 against England in the U-19 World Cup final showed his big-match temperament. The 17-year-old all-rounder from Haryana picked up six wickets and scored 140 runs in that tournament. But what stood out was his sharp acumen and composure while leading his country in two games following a Covid-19 outbreak in the Indian camp.
“Getting a chance to play Ranji Trophy would be a realisation of one of my childhood dreams. I know it is going to be very different to age-group cricket, and I am looking forward to learning more,” Sindhu tells The Indian Express. “The team management has told me and (Dinesh) Bana to simply enjoy the game and take it as just another cricket match.”
The most impressive quality of Sindhu is his ability to read the match situation. Raj Angad Bawa, his U-19 teammate, shares an interesting anecdote about the bouncer he bowled to England’s George Bell in the U-19 World Cup final.
“I had just got the wicket of (William)Luxton. Bell walks in to bat. And Sindhu, who was standing at mid-off, came charging towards me and said, ‘He is their main batter; played a crucial knock against Afghanan. Isko bouncer maar,’ (Fire him a bouncer). I bowled a bouncer and caught him off guard,” recollects Bawa.
There is a reason everyone was surprised when he was not nominated as the captain of India U-19 for the Asia Cup and U-19 World Cup. Sindhu is a serial winner; he led Haryana U-16 to the Vijay Merchant Trophy in the 2018-19 season. Two years later, Sindhu marshalled his troops to the U-19 Vinoo Mankad Trophy. He has already won the U-19 Asia Cup and U-19 World Cup.
Pratyush Raj
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‘I can make a mark’Umran Malik (22, Jammu and Kashmir)
Last Indian Premier League season, Umran Malik was the lone bright spark for Sunrisers Hyderabad. The strapping pacer from Jammu’s Gujjar Nagar was fast and often furious, battering the toes as well as bruising the helmets of batsmen, hurrying them with pace and harassing them with bounce. So pacy was he that his then Sunrisers teammate Rashid Khan commented under an Instagram picture recently: “Bhai thora slow dala karo mujhe (Please bowl slow at me)”.
Capable of clocking 150kph and sustaining such pace throughout spells, Malik demonstrated great potential, so much so that he was picked as a net bowler in India’s squad for the T20 World Cup in the UAE.
A few months later, he made his first-class debut, during the A tour to South Africa. The 22-year-old would now look to establish his red-ball credentials this Ranji season. “My aim is to play all three formats and I am pretty sure that I can make a mark this Ranji season”.
Malik’s progress has been meteoric. Brought up exclusively on a tennis-ball cricket diet, he held the leather ball for the first time in 2018, when he landed up at a coaching centre in the neighbourhood without even a proper pair of shoes. The same year, he appeared for an U-19 trial and got selected instantly. From there on, he swiftly climbed the rungs and became a regular for his state in age-group tournaments. It’s from there that the Sunrisers scouts picked him as a net bowler.
Despite instant fame, Malik has his feet firmly on the ground. “I am working harder (on fitness) and only think of playing for my country, contributing to my team, and winning matches,” he says. His development would be closely monitored this season, as those endowed with natural pace are rare in the country. A bucketful of wickets, and he could be in serious running to play for the country. Raw pace would certainly help him in this journey.
Ashish Satyam
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‘A very long wait’Arzan Nagwaswalla (24, Gujarat)
Few cricketers would have felt as gutted as Arzan Nagwaswalla when there was no Ranji Trophy last season due to the pandemic. His red-ball graph was tracing an upward trajectory when it struck. In two seasons alone, he had bagged 67 wickets in 18 games, of which 41 came in 2019-20, at a strike rate of 39.4.The Indian selectors saw an action that resembles Zaheer Khan’s and picked him as a stand for the World Test Championship final. Not just the former left-armer’s action, but Arzan could also swing the ball into the right-hander with the new ball. As the ball gets older, he could coax seam off the surface at brisk pace. Add to that basket of tools, his precise yorkers and awkward bouncers, and he could be the left-arm seamer that India have been in search of since Zaheer’s farewell.
The 24-year-old from Vapi went unsold in the recent IPL auction, but is far from disappointed. “I will just try to control the things that are in my control. I know my strengths very well and how to use them wisely,” he told The Indian Express.
His biggest strength is bowling with the red ball, and he is keen to resume his wicket-taking ways in the Ranji Trophy. “I am very excited for this season, since it has been a very long wait. I am hopingfor a successful season.”
Though there has not been much cricket around, Arzan is keeping himself in fine fettle for the domestic grind. “I have been following a strict fitness regime and have been feeling good. I am just trying to manage my workload and focusing mostly on my rhythm.” There would be few domestic cricketers around who would be as delighted as Arzan at the start of a new season.
Ashish Satyam
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‘Ranji makes you tough’Jayant Yadav (32, Haryana)
At the age of 32, slowly, Jayant is again back in the national reckoning; he has bagged a lucrative IPL contract with Gujarat Titans snapping him up for Rs 1.7 crore. (File)
The gap between Jayant Yadav’s fourth and fifth Tests was approximately five years. In early 2017, he suffered a freak finger injury and could not bowl for more than a year. It cost him a place in India’s Test squad, and followed a couple of mediocre first-class seasons, he fell down the pecking order.
The start, though, was dreamy. A hundred in his second Test, the first Indian to score a ton at No.9. The injury threatened to derail his career but he has since clawed his way back as a like-for-like replacement for Washington Sundar in the Test against New Zealand last November and made his presence felt in the second innings taking 4 for 49.
“Playing in the Ranji Trophy gives you the temperament to do well in any format. It tests your skill sets and character over four days,” Yadav tells The Indian Express on the eve of Haryana’s first game against Tripura.
At the age of 32, slowly, Jayant is again back in the national reckoning; he has bagged a lucrative IPL contract with Gujarat Titans snapping him up for Rs 1.7 crore.
“The best part about four-day cricket is that there will be days when you don’t do well, but the next day you might get your chance for redemption. Someday, you might have to bat for more than two sessions to save a match, or you will have to bowl 20 overs on the trot to win it. It is full of ups and downs while playing a rigorous Ranji season. In my personal experience, the Ranji Trophy makes you tough as a cricketer,” says Yadav.
Pratyush Raj
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‘Most challenging season’Mandeep Singh (30, Punjab)
In the 2018-19 Ranji season, Mandeep Singh amassed 602 runs at an average of 54.72. Next season, 696 runs came at 69.60. But these numbers will not tell anyone that the 90 against Delhi was on an underprepared pitch in the Capital during the 2018-19 season or the brisk 89 against Kerala came on a green-top Mohali wicket against the trio of Sandeep Warrier, Basil Thampi and MD Nidheesh.
“In the north, we don’t get good wickets. We either play on an unprepared pitch or a green top. You will not see many batsmen from North India scoring 1,000 runs in a season. The South and West batsmen score a bucketful of runs because they play at least 4-5 matches on flat tracks,” Mandeep tells this newspaper.
In the 2019-20 season, his unbeaten 204 against Hyderabad was on a rank turner in Patiala, where Mohammed Siraj had hands on his head because he could get the ball to bounce above the knee. He scored an unbeaten 71 at Thumba against Kerala, where Jalaj Saxena was spitting fire, and the match ended in two days.
“I know scoring big runs is crucial, but one has to see the conditions as well. I was playing my best cricket in the 2019-20 season. I was even selected for the Irani Trophy but it was postponed due to Covid-19. I was never expecting an India call-up, but was hoping for India A. However, I wasn’t selected.”
Mandeep is one of the few Indian cricketers who speaks out; be it on cricketing matters or about the protests against the farm laws (now withdrawn).
But, he will now start the Ranji season underprepared as he hasn’t played a competitive red-ball game in two years. “It is going to be difficult, probably the most challenging season. It is all mental now.”
Pratyush Raj
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Vishnu Vinod (Kerala)
At 28, Vishnu Vinod is not a new kid on the block. But this Ranji Trophy could be a new beginning for him. On the back of impressive performances in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s and Vijay Hazare one-dayers, the wicketkeeper-batsman has been appointed Kerala vice-captain, as Sachin Ba’s deputy.
The elevation can lead to a fixed position in the batting order, something Vishnu has not enjoyed so far in his 20-game first-class career. A naturally attacking player, if Vishnu gets his slot as well as his shot selection right, that average of 22 can surely see a quick rise over the next few weeks.
It was in the 2016-17 Vijay Hazare Trophy that Vishnu first shot to limelight as an effortless six-hitter. An IPL contract with Royal Challengers Bangalore followed, but with scarce opportunities to show his potential. Delhi Capitals bought him in 2021 but released him without giving a game. In the latest IPL auction, SunRisers Hyderabad brought him on board for Rs 50 lakh.
Vishnu, however, has remained consent for Kerala in the 50-over and T20 formats over the years. He has five L A centuries to his name, the latest of which is a testament to his ability to come good in a crisis. Against Maharashtra in the Vijay Hazare Trophy in December, he scored an unbeaten 100 off 82 balls to take Kerala home in a difficult chase after the loss of five early wickets. Earlier in the season, he had hit a 26-ball 65 against Tamil Nadu in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 game.
Even at the Ranji Trophy level, Vishnu has shown he can adapt his game to the longer form, as proved a 193 against Madhya Pradesh in 2018, his lone first-class century till date.
As the Ranji Trophy returns after two years, Vishnu, older, wiser and stronger, will look to make up for lost time and Kerala’s opening match against Meghalaya in Rajkot could set him up for a bumper season.
Narayanan S
