First Innings Lead Problems: Six Changes To The Ranji Trophy

I have written previously about the absurdity of having a 20 over contest with 10 batting wickets allotted to each team, with the same number of fielders and the same rules for dismissal as in a Test Match. My argument was that making the innings so severely short while leaving everything else as it is, skews the contest between bat and ball, and hence, does not sharpen skills and abilities that are necessary for actual Test cricket. In this post, I argue that the idea of granting a "win" based on first innings lead (as the Ranji Trophy allows) also skews the contest between bat and ball, to the detriment of both batting and bowling skills.

The contest between bat and ball lies at the core of cricket. Everything else is peripheral, even marginal. Cricket involves bowling trying to get batsmen out, and batsmen trying to score runs, while avoiding getting out. This basic contest is governed by a number of rules. For example, a batsman has to be dismissed exactly once for his innings to end. There a fixed ways in which batsmen can be out - if a ball they hit is caught on the full, if their stumps are broken, if, while taking a run they are short of the crease when the stumps are broken, and so on. Batting technique, bowling technique, tactics and team balance are determined according to these rules. Bowlers can win Test Matches, batsmen can't. If both sides score hundreds or runs, there will be no victory, not unless both captains declare and set targets. It is not a coincidence that this rarely happens - for why would you give the opposition a chance to win if they are not good enough to take 20 wickets to do so? 

To a remarkable extent, the contest between bat and ball is also determined by the pitch. The nature of a pitch determines the ways in which the width of the bat can be beaten, the lengths that need to be bowled in order to do this, and the types of bowling that can achieve this. At the highest level - Test Cricket, mystery does not survive for long. Most batsmen work out mystery bowlers quite quickly, as Ajantha Mendis, Jack Noriega, Sonny Ramadhin and others (Saeed Ajmal will join this group soon I suspect) will testify. What works then is not mystery, but persistence and control. What works is an ability to avoid unforced errors. The reason why Mutthiah Muralitharan was such a great bowler is that he was hard to play (because of his control of flight and length and pace) even after batsmen were able to pick which way the ball was going to turn. The reason why Anil Kumble was such a great bowler is that he gave nothing away, never tired. He had to be watched carefully, even though batsmen knew what was coming.

Still, the potency of bowlers varies as the wicket does. Certain types of wickets offer no assistance of any kind to any bowler - either because they are so hard and so smooth that the ball simply slides off the surface, or because they are so soft that the ball comes off the wicket quite slowly. The latter can be hard to deal with if a batsman isn't used to it, but its often an easy adjustment to make, as many Australian and South African batsmen who made lots of runs in India will testify. It has for long been a truism of sorts that adjusting from higher pace and bounce to lower pace and bounce is a lot easier than doing the reverse.

The most crucial aspect of cricket - one which is almost universally disregarded, is that there is a basic asymmetry between batting and bowling. Bowlers get to start each play. They get to bowl the delivery where they want to, and they get to set fields as they want to. Batsmen have to react to the field and the delivery. This is why you hear commentators talking about bowlers who "give nothing away". Far more rarely, you hear commentators speak of a batsman who "looks like he is batting on a different wicket from everybody else", or of batsmen who "aren't letting bowlers settle". The latter is especially rare when fast bowlers are bowling. Spinners at least give batsmen with quick footwork the chance and the time to attack them.

All this can be neutered, and has been neutered if "victories" are granted on the basis of a first innings lead. Letting teams win on the first innings crucially changes the nature of the contest between bat and ball. Worse, it creates a incentive (which in my view is a perverse one), for home teams to prepare extreme wickets - either very flat, or very poor. If you don't have to take 20 wickets to get a win (a win on the first innings is worth 60% of an outright win in the Ranji Trophy), why would you go for an outright win? Why would you play to win? The starkest illustration of this episode is recent the Ranji Trophy Final of 2012. Rajasthan batted for 245 overs (over 8 sessions out of the 15 in a 5 day match, first innings in Tests have been longer only twice since the second world war) in their first innings. Then, after gaining a first innings lead of 421, with 3 sessions and the last 40 minutes or so of the 4th days play left, they refused to enforce the follow on and instead batted again. With a lead of 421, even if they had attacked they wouldn't have run any realistic risk of losing. Only one team could have won. And yet, this team didn't want to win. 

In the quarter final against Hyderabad, Rajasthan won the toss, batted first, and made 421 in the first innings in 167 overs. Then, they bowled out Hyderabad for 144 in just 55 overs. They enforced the follow on. Remarkably, Hyderabad followed on with aplomb, scoring 431/2 declared in 98 overs, offering Rajasthan a victory target of 155 in little under a session. Needless to say, Rajasthan didn't go for the target, settling instead to bat out 20 overs, for just 25 runs.

I asked Aakash Chopra, once Virender Sehwag's opening partner in the Test team, and now Rajasthan's imported opener from Delhi about this. His replies were telling. First, he said "perspective, my friend. U live in a jungle, u live by its rules. If 1st inngs lead takes u thru, this will happen always!". About the wicket, he said "as for the track...it improved considerably...we wouldn't have got a result even in 7 days." I asked him if it was a common tactic for teams to try and bat out the first two days. He replied, "of course. Really unfortunate bt what else can u do? No one takes d ownership for better wickets n our archaic point system!"

This struck me at the time (and still does) as quite unsatisfactory. If the wicket was so flat, then why didn't Rajasthan go for 155 in just under a session? But given their strategy in the Ranji Trophy Final, where they refused to try for an outright win even though there was no way that Tamil Nadu could have won, it is not surprising that they didn't go for that run chase. Even Test teams go for run chases when the conditions afford it, as India did at Mumbai against West Indies, right until the end.

But not in the Ranji Trophy. The vicious cycle between the flat wickets and the first innings lead, the contest between bat and ball is severely skewed. It is in nobody's interests to create conditions that permit an actual contest.

Even if Aakash Chopra's rationale sounds dubious, he is not alone. On average, 60% of Ranji Trophy matches (and a higher share of knock out matches) have ended in Draws in the last 3 seasons in the Ranji Trophy. Each of the six teams that qualified for the knockout stage of the Ranji Trophy in 2011-12, played out Draws in the majority of their league games (with the exception of Madhya Pradesh - only half their league games ended in a Draw)

Of all the things that need to change about the Ranji Trophy, this is the most urgent. The first innings lead as an end in itself needs to be eliminated. Teams have to have an incentive to play for a win. This will force them to prepare sporting wickets where bowlers have a chance. 

I would propose the following six changes to the Ranji Trophy:

1. The Groups in the Elite Ranji Trophy should be abolished.

2. The 15 Elite teams should play in a round robin league, where each team plays each of the other 14 teams once every season (alternating between home and away). The 14 match Ranji Trophy season should be played over 18 weeks.

3. The Ranji Trophy final should be abolished, along with the entire knockout phase.

4. The points system should be as follows: 3 points for a Win, 1 point for a Draw (irrespective of the first innings lead) and 0 points for a defeat. Should two teams finish on the same number of points, the tie should be broken along the following lines: (a) the team with the most number of wins is placed higher, (b) the team with the superior bowling average is placed higher, (c) in the unlikely event that both teams have equal bowling averages and number of wins, the team with the superior batting average should be placed higher.

5. 5 teams should be relegated each year to the Plate league, and 5 teams from the Plate league should be promoted. The Plate league should be played along the same lines as the Ranji Trophy.

6. This is an optional idea, Im not 100% convinced that this should be implemented, but it is worth putting out there: Limit the first innings (innings 1 and 2) of each 4 day match to 120 overs. Further, use two new balls, one from each end. Give the fielding team of replacing one of the balls after the 60th over of the innings.

With the points format I have proposed, the 2011-12 Elite Group league table would have been as follows:

The order does not change in Group A, but in Group B, it rewards Haryana for having a better bowling average than Tamil Nadu. This is of course not an ideal illustration, because if teams knew that this was how the Ranji Trophy was going to work, they would play differently and prepare different wickets.

But what it does show, is that Rajasthan became Ranji Trophy "Champions" by taking only 82 out of a possible 140 wickets in their 7 league matches!

Gautam Gambhir recently suggested that India should prepare rank turners for visiting teams. This will probably help India at home, but it will hurt them abroad. A more durable strategy would be to prepare better wickets and create incentives for teams to win in the Ranji Trophy, so that India can develop a pool of fast bowlers and spinners who are used to taking 20 wickets from which they can select the Test team. This type of Test team, when it goes overseas, will command respect, and host teams will be hesitant to prepare wickets that are biased too far in favor of one of the three major aspects of the game - batting, fast bowling or spin bowling.

The Ranji Trophy has to produce a better contest between bat and ball, and providing victories based on first innings leads is getting in the way of producing this contest.

As further changes, I think both the Irani Trophy and the Duleep Trophy should be scrapped. If necessary, these should be replaced by Test Match Trials in October, before the Ranji Trophy starts in November. The Trials should be played in a league between 3 teams - the Test teams and two challenger sides, each selected by the national selectors.

Currently, none of the domestic tournaments - Ranji Trophy, Irani Trophy or IPL or any of the assorted limited overs tournaments that the First Class teams participate in serve the interests of the Test team very well. Neither do they serve the interests of India's ODI and T20 squads, other than in the case of matches in "sub-continent" conditions.

This will have to change, especially now that India's magical batsmen have turned out to be all too human.

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