Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy - The ignored child of Indian domestic cricket

FILE PHOTO: State or franchisee? BCCI’s scheduling of events raises questions over relevance of competitions like Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Ranji Trophy, the prime domestic competition of Indian cricket came into existence in as early as 1934, a couple of years after India’s first international match. And ever since it replaced the Bombay Quadrangular/Pentangular tournament after India’s partition, it catered for all the needs of the Indian national team by giving a pervasive platform to rising cricketers of the country.

The game gradually evolved towards the last quarter of the 20th century with the Kerry Packer revolution. Coloured dresses, white balls and floodlights accompanied the scaled down playing format on the international arena. Following the sporadic changes in the game, BCCI introduced the limited-overs Deodhar Trophy in the 1973-74 season. As the years passed, more tournaments from the shorter format of the game were bred within the domestic framework. The NKP Salve Challenger Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy were later instigated as an attempt to draw more audiences and bring domestic one-dayers to the fray.

The upsurge of T20 cricket then gave cricket its most recent favourite child. India’s win in the inaugural T20 World Cup popularised the format even more in the subcontinent. As recently as the 2008-09 season, the board introduced the first of its kind zonal T20 championship and the third overall in the Indian cricket season, which would see Ranji teams divided along zonal lines into two groups with the tournament ending with the All India T20 final between the winners of the two groups for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

For the 2013/14 season, the zonal stages of the competition got going on March 30 and ended on April 5 while the next stage is still in progress, with the final scheduled to be played on April 14. Before the competition embarked, certain confusion loomed over the availability of those players who were wanted by their respective franchisees to join the training camps before the beginning of the upcoming season of the IPL, scheduled to start from April 16. But the board made it mandatory for all the domestic IPL players to participate in the zone games. The circular issued regarding the same put an end to the discussion.

But was it really for the good? This decision of the board was supposed to prevent IPL from interfering with the domestic circuit, but was it really the case. If that had been the intention, why were the payers obligated to play only the zonal stages and not the next half of the tournament? Gautam Gambhir, Ishant Sharma and Virendra Sehwag (Delhi), Irfan Pathan and Yusuf Pathan (Baroda), Piyush Chawla (Uttar Pradesh captain) led the big names that exited following the zonal stages.

If a team will not be able to field its best players in the group stages, then why include these players in the tournament at all? Given the vast itinerary of the IPL, does the scheduling need to be more proper or are the tournaments like the Mushtaq Ali Trophy a mere formality?

The sequence of events before and during the domestic T20 event has raised deep concerns over the relevance of such tournaments in the season’s schedule. First, with the IPL being recognised as a ‘domestic’ competition by the BCCI, the existence of a second-tier T20 competition is questionable. It has to be noted that several Test playing nations including Australia, England and South Africa have maintained singular tournaments from the shortest format of the game.

Secondly, in my recent voyages to the VCA Civil Lines Stadium, Nagpur last week during the central zone encounters, the only living beings that I could spot apart from the players and the groundstaff were the migratory summer birds flying overhead. So the reason for persisting with this tournament is neither motivated by publicity nor the sponsors.

For the optimist, the biggest positive with this tournament would be that all 27 of the BCCI affiliates get a chance to stake their claims for the title. This means a minimum of 405 players across the country get a platform to showcase their cricketing skills on a national level. But the fact that none of the top 10 run-getters from last season got a nod into the national team bears ample testimony to the board’s negligence of performances in the event.

Talking about the bowlers, Mohammad Shami, who was already an important part of the national squad by then, was the only one from the top ten wicket-takers to feature in the Indian side. This season’s performers, too, would not be expecting much to be honest. The least this could do is ironically earn them places in the starting lineups of their IPL franchisees.

Apart from the crowds showing minimal interest in such tourneys, even the board appears least bothered about whatever unfolds in the tournament.

The easiest solution to cure this problem would be to scrap off this event from the calendar, which would be highly unlikely given the board’s current scenario where they already have a lot of controversies to deal with.

Integrating both the IPL and the Mushtaque Ali Trophy might sound like a naive idea but could be an interesting option. However, too many intricacies may be involved with that happening, so let us not go there for now.

The most viable and realistic option appears to be proper scheduling of the fixtures from the domestic circuit. This should take place in such a way that all players get the chance to play the entire length of the event, which along with proper publicity of the same would make this more than a mere season-filler.

One way or the other, measures need to be taken to uplift the event in order to at least do justice to the iconic status of its namesake.