Like every season, the 90th edition of India’s premier red-ball championship — Ranji Trophy, starting Friday, will provide the perfect stage for youngsters to showcase their potential, old warhorses a chance to redeem themselves and get back into the national selectors’ radar, and for the likes of Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, who lost their BCCI central contracts, an opportunity to stake claim for their lost spots in the national team.

The Ranji Trophy has been split into two phases this time, with the 20-over Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy sandwiched in between. The primary idea behind it is to minimise the disruptions caused by extreme cold conditions in North India, and to look after the players’ workloads and fitness of the quick bowlers.

During the first phase, each team will play five league games in the five-week window between October-November before the focus shifts to the two white-ball competitions. The gap would allow the faster bowlers enough time to recover with shorter spells in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, which runs between November 23 and December 15, and then steadily shift back the preparations again for the second phase of the Ranji Trophy, which commences on January 23, 2025, five days after the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy — the domestic 50-over competition.

As such, the selectors will have their eyes on the first round of the Ranji Trophy with an eye on both the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia as well as the shadow red-ball tour by India A which will be played between October 31 to November 10.

As far as the selection for the Australia tour is concerned, the first phase of the Ranji Trophy could be significant not only for Iyer and Kishan, but also the likes of Abhimanyu Easwaran, Ruturaj Gaikwad and B Sai Sudharsan — with all three in the race for the reserve openers’ slot for the tour Down Under. Going by current form, Easwaran seems the front-runner in the race after scoring three centuries in his last four innings, including his 191 in the Irani Cup.

The Bengal opener will feature in his 100th first-class game, at home, in the second round before he potentially boards the flight for India A’s tour of Australia.

On the other hand, Kishan, who was named the Jharkhand skipper for the first two games, including the opener against Assam, starting Friday in Guwahati, announced his return to domestic cricket with 111 off 126 balls in the Duleep Trophy in Anantapur, while Iyer has scored three fifties in his last four first-class games, including a first-innings 57 in Mumbai’s Irani Cup win.
Veterans Pujara, Rahane add glitter to campaign

India’s sidelined Test stalwarts Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane are back from fairly successful county stints in the UK, and the 36-year-olds have got absolutely nothing to prove to the national selectors as they gear up for another season of the Ranji Trophy.

With a collective tally of nearly 34,500 runs, both Pujara (21,000 runs) and Rahane (13,500), along with Ranji titles in recent years, their presence in the Ranji Trophy will only add glitter to the occasion. They may be out of the selectors’ pool of players for national reckoning, but the hope of a national return or fulfilling certain personal milestones — whatever may be the case, the duo’s experience will certainly benefit the young guns in their respective sides.

Scheduling changes — North India gets most first phase games

Last season, the Ranji Trophy started on January 5 amidst the biting cold and poor visibility across the North Indian venues. As such, it wasn’t surprising that most of those games were either cut short or cancelled due to weather interruptions such as fog and bad light. The most affected were the games scheduled in Meerut, Mohali and Chandigarh which irked the home teams as it affected their chances of progressing to the next round. There were several hours of play lost in Lahli, Jammu, Delhi, Kanpur, Mullanpur and other cities as well.

To avoid such disruptions, the BCCI has taken care of the scheduling this time, and expectedly allotted a bulk of the matches in Srinagar, Delhi, Dharamsala, Lucknow, Rohtak, Chandigarh, Shillong, Dehradun and Mullanpur before the extreme winter season sets in. The second phase of the Ranji Trophy will hardly have any matches in those parts.

The knockouts will be played from February 8 to March 2.