Ranji Trophy : First Class Cricket



      I am sure that many of us must have heard of so and so team winning the Ranji Trophy during March-April when reports of riveting finals appear with coverage of India’s home test matches and previews of IPL teams in the newspapers and sometimes in the electronic media as well. I am also pretty sure that most of us know it is the premier first class competition in the country – the breeding ground for players like the Fab 5 or Anil Kumble or Zaheer Khan, for that matter. Well, I guess not many of us know when the competition started. Well today, we will try to look at the history of this decorated championship that has helped foster the careers of some of the greats of world cricket.
      The tournament started off with the name The Cricket Championship of India after a meeting held in 1934 by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. It started officially during the 1934-35 season. The donor of the trophy was Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, the monarch of Patiala. Bombay, known nowadays as Mumbai, was the first team to land the trophy after defeating North India in the decisive match. Syed Mohammed Hadi from the Hyderabad team was the first batsman to have scored a century.
      Till date, Mumbai have been the most prominent team in the championship with 40 wins. Their sheer dominance can be understood from the fact that they won 15 straight times between the 1958-59 and 1972-73 season. To start with state teams, clubs and cricket associations that had first class status were allowed to take part in the tournament. For example, the Cricket Association of Bengal and the Delhi District Cricket Association are regional teams while Services and Railways are all Indian entities that were given the permission to take part. Over the years the participants of this coveted trophy have changed. Following are some teams that used to participate in past:
    1. Army
    2. Northern Punjab
    3. Central India
    4. North Western Frontier Province
    5. East Punjab
    6. Sind
    7. Holkar
    8. Southern Punjab
    9. Northern India
      10. While teams such as Army, Holkar, Central India, Northern India, East Punjab and Northern Punjab were ultimately let go, teams like the North Western Frontier Province, Southern Punjab and Sind were not considered eligible anymore after the partition and consequent independence of India.
      Till the 2001-02 season, the teams were divided on a geographic basis into 4 or 5 zones such as North, East, South, West. The Central Zone was added during the 1952-53 season. The matches were played in a knock out format till the 1956-57 season and after that the tournament changed to a league for determining the winner. After that the winners in different zones took part in a knockout format for winning the trophy.
      During the 1970-71 season, the knock out stage started to feature the top two teams from each zone and from the 1992-93 season the number went up to 3. From 1996-97 to 1999-2000 the 15 teams took part in a second level group stage where there were 3 groups of 5 teams. The top 2 from each of these groups then went on to feature in the knock out stage. The present format for the Ranji Trophy was adopted in the 2002-03 season.
      In the 2008–09 season, this format was adjusted to give both Super League and Plate League teams an opportunity to contest the Ranji Trophy. The top two from each Plate sub-group contested semi-finals; the winners of these two matches then joined the top three from each Super League sub-group in an eight-team knock-out tournament. The winner of this knock-out tournament then won the Ranji Trophy. Promotion and relegation between Super League and Plate League continued as before. In the 2010–11 season, Rajasthan won the Ranji Trophy after beginning the season in the Plate League.
      From the 2012–13 season, this format was adjusted slightly. The Super League and Plate League names were abandoned, but the two-tier system remained. The top tier expanded from fifteen teams to eighteen teams, in two sub-groups of nine (known as Group A and Group B, and considered equal in status); and the second tier was reduced to nine teams in a single group (known as Group C). The top three teams from Groups A and B and the top two from Group C contest the knockout phase. The lowest placed team in each of Group A and Group B is relegated to Group C, and the top two from Group C are promoted to the top tier.
      Round-robin matches are four days in length; knockout matches are played for five days. Throughout its history, if there is no outright result in a Ranji Trophy knock-out match, the team leading after the first innings is the winner.
      Prior to the 2016–17 season matches were played at the home ground of one of the two teams taking part. For the 2016–17 competition the BCCI decided that all games would be staged at a neutral venue.
    10. Current teams are:
    11. Andhra
    12. Assam
    13. Baroda
    14. Bengal
    15. Chhattisgarh
    16. Delhi
    17.  Goa
    18.  Gujarat
    19. Haryana
    20. Himachal Pradesh
    21. Hyderabad
    22. Jammu & Kashmir
    23. Jharkhand
    24. Karnataka (Mysore)
    25. Kerala (Travancore-Cochin)
    26. Madhya Pradesh (Madhya Bharat / Holkar / Central India)
    27. Maharashtra
    28. Mumbai (Bombay)
    29. Odhisha
    30. Punjab
    31. Railways
    32. Rajasthan (Rajputana)
    33. Saurashtra (Nawanagar)
    34. Sevices(army)
    35. Tamilnadu (Madras)
    36. Tripura
    37. UP (United Provinces)
    38. Vidhrabha
      39. Chhattisgarh played in the tournament for the first time in 2016–17



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