2017-18 Ranji Trophy: 5 things that went wrong for Tamil Nadu this season 

No notable contributions from the big names

Over the last few seasons, the likes of Murali Vijay, R Ashwin, Abhinav Mukund, Dinesh Karthik and Vijay Shankar have been the backbone of the Tamil Nadu side, along with the Baba twins. B Aparajith and B Indrajith were TN's best performers of this season along with K Vignesh and Washington Sundar.

The likes of Yo Mahesh and Narayan Jagadeesan scored some crucial runs when needed. Apart from these names, there were no notable contributions from the other players. The likes of Vijay, Karthik, Ashwin and Vijay Shankar were not available for the whole season, due to their India and India A commitments. To be fair, Vijay, Ashwin and Vijay Shankar did a decent job when they turned out for TN.

Captain Abhinav, who has been prolific in the past, scoring over 750 runs in each season, managed just 247 runs in nine innings at an average of 30, numbers that are not good for a player of Abhinav's calibre. His captaincy was also not up to the mark as the players remained defensive on most occasions and few of his strategies were questionable.

Along with Abhinav, Kaushik Gandhi, who scored over 750 runs last season, scored just 91 runs in six innings this season and that didn't help the team's cause. With the big guns misfiring, Tamil Nadu found themselves knocked out of the tournament after the first round.

Injuries to some of their key players didn't help their cause either.