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Nagpur may be the geographical center of India and host the Civil Lines stadium located in the heart of the city, but it is not the semi-final of the Vidarbha-Madhya Pradesh Ranji trophy that will take center stage. There will be much more focus on the Mumbai-Tamil Nadu clash, with Shreyas Iyer, in his first domestic outing after losing his India contract.
However, that will not discourage either Vidarbha or Madhya Pradesh, who have become accustomed to achieving success in tournaments without stars or attention. In the last five years, these two teams have won three Ranji titles – Vidarbha winning consecutively in 2017-18 and 18-19 and MP in 2021-22. Behind each of these victories, there was a mastermind – Chandrakant Pandit, the most successful head coach in the Ranji circuit.
“Any team in the knockout round has to be a good team. I can only remind my players of the change in mentality and that there are no second chances here. It will be a good fight,” said Pandit, sitting in the MP’s corner.
That the four semi-finalists lead the league stage standings is a fair reflection of the strength of the competing group. While Vidarbha had a more comfortable victory in the quarterfinals against Karnataka (they eliminated their rivals on the last day and won by 127 runs), MP prevailed against Andhra with the narrowest of margins: 4 runs.
In MP’s close win, pacer Anubhav Agarwal, who claimed six wickets in the last innings, turned out to be an unlikely hero among other bowlers who had experience in India, India A and IPL. Identifying heroes for pressure moments has been one of Pandit’s strengths.
Vidarbha have not put up any eye-catching performances this year but the batting workload has been shared by their imports – Karun Nair (515 runs) and Dhruv Shorey (496 runs) as well as local boy Atharva Taide (488 runs). With the ball, most of the damage has been done by left-arm spinner Aditya Sarwate (37 weeks).
For MP too there is no one to top the season run-scoring charts or the wicket-taker list: Venkatesh Iyer has the highest score for MP with 528 runs, while left-arm wrist-spinner Kumar Kartikeya , has collected most of its land (38). .
At best, Ranji Trophy knockout matches have few promotions. But for individual players, at different stages of their careers, these games mean a lot.
Those like Taide, Kartikeya and Saransh Jain (an outstanding all-rounder) are fighting for bigger honours. Avesh Khan would crave a heroic performance so that he can reunite with his state mate Rajat Patidar in the Indian dressing room.
For players like Karun Nair and Umesh Yadav, it may be about playing for pride. Or, who knows, at this late stage in their careers, they may still have the conviction to take center stage again.