ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2020

96 India in 2019/20 At the Ranji quarterfinal stage, Goa’s fine form in the Plate counted for nothing as they were trounced by Gujarat by the little matter of 464 runs. Elsewhere, Group C qualifiers Jammu and Kashmir and Orissa had their hopes ended by Karnataka and Bengal respectively. These two teams met in the semifinal, Bengal winning comfortably, while Saurashtra, who had reached the other semifinal by easing past Andhra on first-innings lead, prevailed in a well-contested game against Gujarat. The final proved to be an attritional affair. Having won a crucial toss, Saurashtra batted all though the first two days and ground their way to 425; and this was enough as Bengal, going even more slowly, could muster only 381 in response. With no chance of bringing the match to a more definite conclusion, the two sides played out time and Saurashtra claimed their first-ever Ranji title. As Ranji champions, Saurashtra would normally have contested the Irani Cup game against the Rest of India, but this proved to be the only fixture in India’s first-class season to fall victim to the pandemic. Despite its loss, no fewer than 181 matches were played, surpassing the previous Indian record of 174 set only the season before. (The total includes Afghanistan’s ‘home’ Test against West Indies, played at Lucknow in November.) Arunachal Pradesh’s bottom place in the Plate suggests they were the weakest first-class side in India; but in Rahul Dalal, their right-hand middle-order batsman and (often) wicketkeeper, they had easily the season’s most prolific run-scorer. After a modest and somewhat intermittent career from 2012/13 averaging 18.97 for Haryana, he switched to Arunachal Pradesh this season and found the Plate bowling much more to his liking as he racked up 1340 runs at 95.71. His was the only tally in excess of a thousand; and of the four other batsmen to pass 900, three were in the Plate. The exception was Mumbai’s Sarfaraz Khan, whose total of 928 and average of 154.66 were boosted by unbeaten triple- and double-centuries in successive innings. The season’s leading wicket-taker was Saurashtra’s left-arm seamer Jaydev Unadkat, who played a solitary unsuccessful Test back in 2010/11 but now did much to bowl his side to the Ranji title, and for good measure also appeared for Duleep-winning India Red: in all first-class matches he claimed 76 victims at only 14.77. He was well ahead of Diwesh Pathania of Services and India Blue, with 56; two other bowlers, Sanjay Yadav of Meghalaya, with 55, and Harshal Patel of Haryana (52), also exceeded fifty wickets. (JCB) Duleep Trophy 2019/20: Final table P W L DWF DLF ND BP Pts Quot 6 0 3 1 1 1 India Red 2 0 0 2 0 0 0 6 1.141 2 India Green 2 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 1.197 3 India Blue 2 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 0.630 FINAL: India Red beat India Green by an innings and 38 runs Ranji Trophy 2019/20: Final tables Group A P W L DWF DLF ND BP Pts Quot 6 0 3 1 1 1 Gujarat 8 5 0 1 2 0 0 35 1.234 2 Bengal 8 4 1 2 0 1 1 32 1.470 3 Andhra 8 4 2 0 2 0 1 27 1.174 4 Punjab 8 3 3 1 1 0 2 24 1.279 5 Vidarbha 8 2 2 2 1 1 1 21 1.158 6 Delhi 8 2 1 2 2 1 0 21 1.006 7 Rajasthan 8 2 4 1 1 0 1 17 0.841 8 Kerala 8 1 5 1 0 1 0 10 0.772 9 Hyderabad 8 1 6 0 1 0 0 7 0.509