Duleep Trophy 2016: Preview

Images from the first ever pink ball match in India at the Eden Gardens between Bhowanipur Club and Mohon Bagan

The addition of pink ball and floodlights will be the biggest talking point ahead of the Duleep Trophy opener between India Red and India Green beginning on Tuesday. The tournament will return in the Indian domestic circuit after a one-season break.

Not only the colour of the ball and the timings of the match has been changed, the whole format has seen a variety of changes. Three teams will contest in the tournament instead of the usual five called India Red, India Blue and Indian Green. This is not the first time the format of Duleep Trophy has been changed.

It started off as a knockout affair among five zonal teams in the year 1961-62 and later on became a league competition from 1993-94 onwards and replaced the zones with Elite A, Elite B, Elite C, Plate A and Plate B in the 2002-03 season. Since then for the next five seasons an overseas team was also invited but again after 2008 it became a five team knockout tournament.

Season Guest Team

2003–04: England A2004–05: Bangladesh2005–06: Zimbabwe Cricket Union President’s XI2006–07: Sri Lanka A2007–08: England Lions

Earlier it was learnt that all the players from the national team will take part in the Duleep Trophy but after the announcement of the historic two-match T20 series in the US, the players won’t be able to take part in the domestic competition at least for the initial stages of the tournament.

The teams will be led by Yuvraj Singh (India Red), Gautam Gambhir (India Blue) and Suresh Raina (India Green). With India planning to host day-night Test matches in the near future, the Duleep Trophy will be played with pink balls and under lights. All the 3 teams will play each other once in the group stages with the top two teams qualifying for the final on 14th September.

All the group matches will be a normal four-day affair while the final will be a five-day match. Just as any other domestic tournament good performances will interest the selectors but the most vital aspect BCCI will be looking forward to is getting the feedback from Yuvraj, Gambhir and Raina. If day-night Test cricket has to be a reality in India then how the Duleep Trophy pans out might be the key.

The BCCI delayed announcing the schedule for the Duleep Trophy and it was only made public on 11th August. In fact, the schedule for the upcoming Ranji Trophy is not disclosed yet though the new season is just around the corner.

Despite some of the big ticket players missing out due to national duty, the tournament remains an attractive proposition. Harbhajan Singh, Dinesh Karthik, Suresh Raina, Robin Uthappa and Gambhir are the Test discards who will want to give the selectors a timely reminder that they are still in the fray, but with India performing exceptionally well in their last few Test series, it is highly unlikely that any of these players will get a look in at the Test level, at least for now.

Once the Test series in West Indies concludes, Cheteshwar Pujar and Murali Vijay will join their respective teams while Shardul Thakur who was there in the Test squad has already come back and joined India Blue.

The BCCI hasn’t named any of the recent Test players in the squad but there is an outside chance that the players might join their teams after finishing their national duty.

Squads:

India Red: Abhinav Mukund, KS Bharat, Sudip Chatterjee, Gurkeerat Singh, Yuvraj Singh (capt), Ankush Bains (wk), Arun Karthik, Akshay Wakhare, Kuldeep Yadav, Nathu Singh, Anureet Singh, Ishwar Pandey, Nitish Rana, M Ashwin, Abhimanyu Mithun.

India Blue: Gautam Gambhir (capt), Mayank Agarwal, Sheldon Jackson Baba Aparajith, Siddhesh Lad, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Parvez Rasool, K Monish, Krishna Das, Suryakumar Yadav, Mohit Sharma, Pankaj Singh, Shardul Thakur, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari.

India Green: Robin Uthappa, Jalaj Saxena, Ambati Rayudu, Ian Dev Singh, Rohan Prem, Suresh Raina (capt), Parthiv Patel (wk), Harbhajan Singh, Shreyas Gopal, Ashok Dinda, Sandeep Sharma, Ankit Rajpoot, Rajat Paliwal, Jasprit Bumrah, M Vijay.