Is the Irani Cup Even Worth Playing Anymore?

The Irani Cup, one of India's premier domestic cricket matches, ended in a boring draw on Sunday, 18 March. Ranji Trophy champions Vidarbha opted to bat first, amassed 800-7 over three-and-a-half days, skittled out their opponents Rest of India for 412, and walked away with the title courtesy the first innings lead.

Seen in a larger perspective, the match wasn't a good advertisement for the game of cricket, for it was hardly a contest. A total of 1,269 runs were scored, and bowlers were only able to pick up a total of 17 wickets in a total of 381.4 overs; those numbers work out to a wicket every 75 runs or a wicket every 22 overs on an average.

The men who make the decision in the BCCI must contemplate if the match is worthy of first-class status.

In first-class cricket – which is one level below the highest level of the game – players must earn their runs and toil to pick up wickets. But this Irani Cup match played at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur was anything but that.

First, the scheduling of the match made no sense – being played more than two months after the Ranji Trophy final and after players had switched to playing the limited overs formats.

Then there was faulty selection by the national selection committee; MSK Prasad, Devang Gandhi and Sarandeep Singh have generally done a fine job in their tenure as national selectors, but not on this occasion though. The 15-member Rest of India squad they chose had five openers (four of whom played in the XI), had a Test spinner who appeared to be playing in the match only to further his own interests.

Further, the selectors did not reward top-performers in the Ranji Trophy.

How could they justify picking Ravichandran Ashwin and Jayant Yadav (who missed the entire Ranji Trophy season nursing an injury) at the expense of the season’s highest wicket-taker Jalaj Saxena?

Barring Navdeep Saini, there was no other representation from Delhi who were the runners-up in the Ranji Trophy. Could the selectors not make room for Dhruv Shorey in the middle order?

Then there was the attitude of the players. Ravichandran Ashwin, the world's top-ranked bowler in Test matches not too long ago, was playing for his own cause. At this grade of cricket, Ashwin – who gets picked in the Indian Test team for his off-spin bowling – was bowling leg-breaks. It takes hours and hours of toil and bowling thousands of deliveries for specialist leg-spinners to master the craft. Yet, here was Ashwin bowling 'work-in-progress' leg-spin in a first-class match.

How this was allowed baffles me. Then the question of his involvement; being such an experienced cricketer, one would expect Ashwin would be at the fore, helping out an inexperienced captain, especially when the opponent's are on their way to a total of 800. But no, Ashwin appeared disinterested and was hardly involved in proceedings. There was a phase in Vidarbha's first innings – for a period of 60 overs – when he did not bowl a solitary over. Finally, Ashwin walked to the post-match presentation in a pair of flip-flops when most of the rest of the team were in cricket attire. That was most disappointing from a Test star.

Of course, there could be valid reasons for Ashwin's restricted participation or for him not bowling as much, reasons which people outside the dressing room are not privy to. But for someone who watched nearly every ball of the match, it was disappointing to watch Ashwin's body language and see him put his interests over and above the interests of the team.

And finally, the farcical third innings, with the RoI bowlers rushing through the overs just to ensure they bowled the required overs for the day quickly so the match could be called off; 26 overs – which would have normally taken around 104 minutes – were bowled in a span of 78 minutes. Most of the last 10-15 overs were bowled at the rate of each over consuming less than two minutes, with the likes of Mayank Agarwal, Hanuma Vihari, R Samarth and Prithvi Shaw rolling their arm over with no purpose other than completing the day's quota of overs. Surely, the runs scored in that period don't deserve to be counted among first-class runs.

There was a time when playing in the Irani Cup meant being on the brink of selection into the national team. The Irani Cup was meant to be 'best against the rest'; it was meant to be a contest where players test themselves against the best in the country. But with players looking after their own interests, one needs to ask if there is any merit in playing the Irani Cup – given there is hardly any pride or culture at stake.