ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2017

The Trophy had proceeded in a slightly unreal atmosphere because of the Indian authorities’ decision that all matches should be played at neutral venues. The idea was to prevent groundsmen from preparing pitches to suit the home side but the experiment proved universally unpopular and did not result in any noticeable change in pitches as only 57 out of 117 scheduled group matches reached a definite result (two fell victim to Delhi’s notorious smog and the remainder were drawn). The clearest result came in Group B, where Jharkhand and Karnataka managed five outright wins and stood well ahead of the rest. Orissa narrowly secured the third qualifying place in this group. In Group C, theoretically weaker than the others and with only two qualifying places, Hyderabad led the way with four wins and were joined by Haryana, who demonstrated the enduring value of the winning draw at the Ranji group stage. In Group A, meanwhile, outright wins were hard to come by and only defending champions Mumbai could manage as many as three; Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, with only two wins apiece but four winning draws, were the other qualifiers. But everyone knows that, come the knockouts, form at the group stage counts for nothing. Karnataka, easy qualifiers from Group B, were swept aside in two days by Tamil Nadu, marginal qualifiers from Group A. Group B winners Jharkhand, however, always had the edge in a well-fought game against Group C runners-up Haryana and eventually prevailed by five wickets; while the Group C winners Hyderabad ran Mumbai even closer in a fascinating encounter ultimately decided by the narrow margin of 30 runs. In the remaining quarter-final Gujarat, having secured a first-innings lead against Orissa, closed out the game thanks to Samit Gohel, who carried his bat for a monumental 359*. In the semi-finals, Gujarat overcame a first-innings deficit to force their way past Jharkhand; meanwhile Tamil Nadu, having also conceded a first-innings lead, sought to open the game up with a bold declaration challenging Mumbai to make 251 to win. The defending champions achieved the task for the loss of four wickets to reach yet another final. So it seemed that the script had been written for the familiar outcome of a Mumbai victory. But if so, Gujarat had failed to read it. They scrapped their way to a first-innings lead of exactly 100 only for Mumbai to fight back with a second innings of 411. Thus the victory target was a taxing one, but Gujarat, thanks to skipper Parthiv Patel who struck a superb 143 that saw his side from a precarious 51-2 to within sight of victory when he was fifth man out at 299. And so Gujarat claimed the Ranji Trophy for the first time after more than eighty years of trying. At the start of the season, the Duleep Trophy had reappeared after a season’s absence in a revamped format involving a mini-league between three select sides followed by a final. The combination labelled ‘India Blue’ won the Trophy, but it remains to be seen whether this format will succeed either in capturing the imagination of the public or in fulfilling the Trophy’s traditional function as a bridge between Ranji cricket and the sterner demands of the international game. The domestic season ended with the Irani Cup, in which Ranji winners Gujarat seemed until well into the fourth day to have the measure of the somewhat experimental Rest of India side picked to play against them. But then two of the Rest’s Test players, Cheteshwar Pujara and Wriddaman Saha, came together at 63-4 chasing 379 and proceeded to knock off the runs without being separated. Pujara, indeed, stood out as the leading batsman across the whole of a crowded first-class season, with no fewer than 2064 runs at an excellent 82.56. This total easily eclipsed Chandu Borde’s record for an Indian season (1604 back in 1964/65); in fact, it was the best aggregate ever achieved in a season anywhere outside England, surpassing New Zealander John Reid’s remarkable 1915 runs on tour in South Africa in 1961/62. 92 India in 2016/17