Former cricketers Irfan Pathan and Sunil Gavaskar’s on-air rant and head coach Gautam Gambhir’s subtle message to his team after the Sydney Test against Australia sparked a major discussion among BCCI officials on the need to prioritise domestic cricket further when they met on Saturday in Mumbai for a review meeting. With that sparked the question, with the second half of the 2024/25 Ranji Trophy slated to begin on January 23, will the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, towards whom those statements were directed, along with the ones who were rested from the T20I series against England play in the tournament?
Last year, BCCI mandated that all players not on national duty participate in domestic cricket. However, Shreyas Iyer, who was dropped midway through the home Test series in January 2023, and Ishan Kishan, who had taken a mental health break, skipped the Ranji Trophy. Although the former returned to the Mumbai squad for the semifinal and final matches, the officials at the BCCI were angered by their earlier act as they cracked the whip to drop both their names from the central contract list.
However, a report in Hindustan Times on Monday said that Kohli and Rohit are unlikely to face the same verdict if they do not play in the Ranji Trophy tournament amid the uncertainty over their Test future. “With Kohli though, there is a strong view within the board that if he is keen to play on, he should bat with pomp like before and for that returning to the basics may be necessary,” read the report.
A board official privy to discussions with the selectors further told the national daily that the current move to prioritise domestic cricket in the wake of India’s poor batting show in the tour of Australia, was not a “diktat.” But the report added: “If the players do not play Ranji Trophy without valid medical or fitness reasons, it would have a bearing on their future India selection.”
Kohli, Rohit had escaped the 2024 ‘diktat’
If not now, the 2024 move was certainly a ‘diktat’ then, which sparked hopes that both Kohli and Rohit would play in the Duleep Trophy in September, given that neither were in action since the T20 World Cup win. However, they skipped the domestic tournament, designed to help selectors pick the squad for the Bangladesh tour and offer the players to gear up for the long red-ball season ahead. But Kohli’s struggle against spin persisted, while both incurred a horrendous campaign against New Zealand at home in November.
“There’s no substitute to spending time at the crease to regain confidence. It is for the player, no matter how experienced, to realise it,” a BCCI official said.