ACS Oveseas First-Class Annual 2013

Yet Mumbai achieved only one outright win in Group A, and managed to scrape third place only by virtue of five winning draws. Punjab won the group easily, and was one of only two teams to record four wins from its eight matches at the group stage. The other was Uttar Pradesh, who won Group B by a similarly wide margin. Defending champions Rajasthan finished winless near the bottom of Group A. But success during the group phase counted for little in the knockouts. Uttar Pradesh fell to Group C winners Services at the quarter-final stage, while Punjab was heavily defeated by Saurashtra in the semi-final. But at least these matches produced a definite result; for the most part, the knockouts proceeded along familiar lines, with dour battles for first-innings lead. Their extension to five days led to taller scoring rather than more results, as totals of 645-9d, 699-3d and 718-9 were recorded. But the final itself was not drawn: Mumbai, showing its best form at the right time, utterly overwhelmed Saurashtra, whose most recent appearance in the final (as Nawanagar) had been as far back as 1937/38. The thinking behind the Ranji reorganisation had been to reduce the proportion of draws, but this aim was not achieved. Of the 115 matches in the competition, as many as 69 were drawn; virtually the same proportion as the 52 out of 88 in 2011/12. The awarding of 6 points rather than 5 for a win at the league stage made no discernible difference to the approach taken by teams, which, in match after match, was first to concentrate on securing first-innings points and then to make absolutely sure of avoiding defeat. This is, surely, an understandable response to the competition rules, which award no points for a defeated side even if it led on first innings. It might encourage sides to press more strongly for victory, even if they thereby risked defeat, if first-innings points were retained regardless of the outcome of the game, although in this case the number of points for a win would need to be significantly increased. The Ranji reorganisation was not the only change in the Indian season. The Irani Cup, between the Ranji champions and the Rest of India, was moved to the end of the season rather than the beginning of the following season. This allowed Mumbai to play the match immediately after the Ranji final, when confidence must have been sky-high. The outcome was a creditable draw. But the changed schedule resulted in the oddity that the Irani Cup was contested twice in 2012/13: it had also opened the season with an innings defeat for the 2011/12 Ranji winners, Rajasthan. The Duleep Trophy, between the five zonal sides, moved from the end of the season to the beginning. East Zone retained the title by securing a first-innings lead against Central Zone in a rain-marred final. Not surprisingly in view of the increased number of matches, six batsmen passed 1,000 runs in the first-class season compared with two on 2011/12. C.A.Pujara, with 1,585 at 93.23, had easily the highest aggregate and scored 352 for Saurashtra against Karnataka in the Ranji quarter-final. Yet in some ways the most remarkable batting performance of the year was by the 22-year-old Jiwanjot Singh of Punjab, who on his first-class debut scored 213 for Punjab against Hyderabad, followed this with 158 against Bengal in his next first-class innings, and went on to head the Ranji aggregates with 995 runs at 66.33 (1,019 at 63.68 in all matches). His selection for the India A side against the Australians marked him as an outstanding prospect. Special mention should be made of Saurashtra’s 24-year-old all-rounder R.A.Jadeja. His two triple-hundreds in Ranji matches in 2012/13, added to his previous such effort in 2011/12, made him the member of an exclusive club of men with three scores of 300 in a career. He shares this distinction with W.G.Grace, G.A.Hick, M.E.K.Hussey and B.C.Lara; only W.R.Hammond and W.H.Ponsford (four apiece) and D.G.Bradman (six) have more. Not surprisingly, the fact that Jadeja now walks in such illustrious company catapulted him into the Indian Test side where he made an almost immediate impact: strangely though, not for his batting but for his slow-left-arm bowling. His 24 wickets in the four Tests against Australia helped him to a total of 51 in all first-class matches in 2012/13. This, together with his 891 runs at 74.25, added up to an exceptional season for his state and country. 108 India in 2012/13