A very un-Tamil Nadu-like Ranji season

4. Four-day cricket today demands some top order intent

Baba AparajithWhat do Mayank Agarwal, Anmolpreet Singh, Prithvi Shaw, Sanju Samson and Faiz Fazal have in common? They are all top order batsmen who have scored heavily this season at fairly quick strike rates and in the process, helping their teams qualify to the knockout stage. While it is not necessary to possess this quality to be a red ball cricketer, there needs to be at least one aggressor to complement all the accumulators at the top of the order for TN.

Dinesh Karthik often did this job regularly over the years for the side, but could not play more than one innings this season due to national commitments. N Jagadeesan and Washington Sundar seem to fit the bill, but played far too less matches at the top to be judged on this basis. Being unable to score rapidly at crucial junctures through the tournament led TN to not only lose momentum while batting but also led them to being unable to put the opposition on the backfoot on numerous occasions where they should have.

In the end, individual performances were not strong enough in helping TN’s case in their push for qualification.

The Baba twins were the highest run-getters for TN this season, but were ranked 40th and 46th respectively in terms of runs at the end of the league phase. In contrast to this, during the last season, TN had four batsmen among the top 25 run-getters, with skipper Abhinav Mukund leading from the front at 9th place. Similarly, while K Vignesh was ranked 12th with 24 scalps at the end of the league phase this season – no other bowler featured in the top 50 – the previous season saw two pacers in K Vignesh and Aswin Crist ranked 9th and 11th respectively in the highest wicket-takers list.