ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2014

Maharashtra may have failed to win the Ranji Trophy but could at least claim the season’s leading first-class run-scorer, Kedar Jadhav with a total of 1269 at 79.31. He was one of four batsmen to exceed a thousand runs, the others being Lokesh Rahul and Manish Pandey, both of Ranji champions Karnataka, and another Maharashtra man, Harshad Khadiwale. No bowler took fifty wickets in the season: Himachal Pradesh’s medium-pacer Rishi Dhawan came closest, with 49 at 20.63. The Duleep Trophy between the five zonal sides was played in October and suffered severely from the early-season weather, which prevented even a first-innings result in one of the semi-finals (decided on the toss of a coin) and the final (thus the Trophy was shared between North and South Zones). This unsatisfactory outcome raised further questions about the continuing value of this tournament now that the proliferation of limited-overs cricket has eroded its traditional role as a stepping-stone between the Ranji Trophy and the Test team. Even the zones themselves have lost their original raison d’être of providing a geographical basis for the early stages of the Ranji Trophy, a purpose they last served in 2001/02. Even before the Duleep Trophy, the first-class season had begun with short visits by New Zealand A and West Indies A, which played respectively two and three matches against India A. Both the New Zealand games were drawn and the West Indies matches finished 1-1. (JCB) 115 India in 2013/14