ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2018

India in 2017/18 If India still sat atop the ICC Test table at the end of the season, it was perhaps with a little less pride than twelve months before. Back then, India’s eminence had been earned by a stunning performance of thirteen victories out of sixteen Tests played; but now, a further twelve matches had resulted in a less-than-stellar return of only four wins to set against six defeats, and the continuation of India’s reign reflected less the side’s own merits than the frailties and inconsistencies of the other leading teams. Matters had started well enough with a 1-0 win in a three-match home rubber against Sri Lanka. But the next commitment was the more daunting prospect, for a team with a reputation for not travelling well, of three Tests in South Africa. It proved to be a dour, hard-fought rubber dominated by the seamers on both sides, with Vernon Philander outstanding. Of India’s vaunted batting line-up, only Virat Kohli could be said to have maintained his reputation as, in a rubber of mainly modest scoring, South Africa won the first two Tests before India grabbed a consolation win in the third. In June 2018 (see ‘Other Matches in 2018’) India enjoyed the honour of welcoming the twelfth Test nation, Afghanistan, to the highest level of the game. The match proved a terrible anticlimax: Afghanistan, having lost the toss in the one-off Test, must have felt cautiously pleased to have restricted their illustrious hosts to 347-6 on the opening day. No one could have anticipated the carnage that was to follow on the next and, as it proved, final day: India rapidly lifted their total to an imposing 474 and then required less than five hours’ play to run through Afghanistan twice. This crushing win must have put India in good heart for their tour of England, with a full five Tests crammed into a period of only 42 days. But again, India struggled in alien conditions far from home, and despite periods of competitiveness in all the Tests except the second, emerged with four defeats and only a heartening win in the third Test to set against them. For India, it is not enough merely to be at the head of the Test table: the side aspires to the dominance displayed by Australia around the turn of the present century, or by West Indies in the 1980s. But to do this, it must demonstrate superiority over all opposition, and in any conditions; and by this demanding standard, the team fell well short in the twelve months under review, both in South Africa and again in England. Unless this can be remedied, India’s maintenance of top place will continue to rely on the greater shortcomings of the other leading teams such as South Africa, Australia and England. On the domestic scene, for the second year in succession a new name was carved onto the Ranji Trophy. Last year it was Gujarat; this time it was another of the Trophy’s cinderella sides, Vidarbha. This team, based at Nagpur and occupying, in geographical terms, the inland areas in the east of Maharashtra state, emerged from the reorganization of Ranji sides in this area in the 1950s. The team made its bow in 1957/58 and has competed in every season since, but until 2017/18 the best it had to show were quarterfinal appearances in 1970/71 and 1995/96. The venerable Trophy had been reorganized for 2017/18, as the BCCI terminated the unpopular policy of playing all matches at neutral venues and restructured the 28 teams into four groups of seven. The top two from each group would proceed to the knockout stage. Vidarbha proved comfortably the strongest side in Group D, with four wins from the six matches, but often in Ranji history a team has swept aside opposition at the group stage only to crumble as soon as it reaches the knockouts. Indeed, the Group C qualifiers Gujarat and Kerala provided a demonstration of this: having each won five of their six group games, both fell in the quarterfinals with defending champions Gujarat edged out on first-innings lead by Bengal while Kerala were utterly outgunned by Vidarbha, who romped to victory by over 400 runs. In the semifinal, however, it was another story as Group A winners Karnataka, fresh from an innings quarterfinal victory over mighty Mumbai, dismissed Vidarbha for only 185 and ran up 301 in reply. Facing a deficit of 116 in a match of moderate scores, Vidarbha might easily have folded; 145