If we were to check the Ranji Trophy winners tally there are few names that are very prominent in the list. Mumbai being the tournament winner 41 times, and Karnataka are 8-time winners and they again made it to the knockouts of season 2021-22. Here in this article, we talk about Will there be An End To the Dominance Of Elite Teams’ In Ranji Trophy?
Even though for the past few years we have had newer winners for the Ranji trophy as Vidharbha and Saurashtra upping their game, we cannot deny the fact that there are a few elite teams who have prominently been the highlight of the Ranji Trophy and they are favorites to win the tournament even before it starts. There are many reasons for it to be a trend now. Earlier, the teams made a sincere effort to upscale the game in their region. This is very prevalent in Mumbai as they have grounds dedicated to training for cricket. There also have been many big players coming from the states such as some of India’s greatest crickets Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Vijay Merchant, Dilip Vengsarkar and many more players represented India and made the country proud. This helped in rising of cricket in Mumbai as there were role models ready for the kids to follow and pursue cricket as a career.
Of all the states, the players from Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Gujarat have given the most World Cup players for India. There are many players from these regions who have converted their domestic status to international and when India has an off-season while Ranji Trophy is taking place, we see those celebratory names in the playing 11 and look forward to how they dominate in the local matches. The highlight of these big names has made these teams even bigger and as a cycle, this keeps continuing and the status keeps growing.
As for now, the concern should lie in if these teams have such a big influence in determining what will the future of Indian cricket look like, are we forgetting the other teams whose players are performing equally well. The smaller teams such as Jharkhand, Services, Railways, and Uttarakhand have a couple of players each who have helped their team win matches against the giants such as Jay Bisht (Uttarakhand), Rahul Singh Gahlaut (Services), Chetan Dinesh Bist (Nagaland) and many like them but they have been overlooked by the selectors. The inclusion and support to these players will definitely help in having a bigger bench, sustenance to big names, and representation of states and teams to grow cricket even further in the regions.
In this year’s Ranji Trophy half of the teams could be considered ‘elite’. While Mumbai has shown its dominance with players like Prithwi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan, Yashasvi Jaiswal Dhawal Kulkarni, Mohit Avasthi, and Tushar Deshpande forming the majority of the team who have already presented India at the highest level. Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh had tough competition against each other which was eventually won by UP. The smaller teams seem to not turn around the game in their favor. As mentioned earlier, this is the cycle that may continue, or there will be a system change that will give smaller teams bigger opportunities by having better training facilities to boost cricket even further.
