India’s former left-handed all-rounder, Irfan Pathan, has advocated for the national players to be consistent in the domestic red-ball tournaments. The superstars of Indian cricket, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, turned up for the Ranji Trophy 2024-25 after their form declined terribly in the longest format.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) made it mandatory for the players to feature in the domestic tournaments for the national selection. The blue brigade’s Test captain, Rohit Sharma, and opener, Yashasvi Jaiswal, played the fifth round of the red-ball domestic event for Mumbai against Jammu and Kashmir at the Sharad Pawar BKC ground.
Ravindra Jadeja and Rishabh Pant faced each other during the contest between Delhi and Saurashtra at the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot. The former celebrated his time with 12 wickets in the contest, while the left-handed wicket-keeper batter struggled against the spinners.
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Virat Kohli and KL Rahul missed the last round of the event due to respective injuries but marked their return into the final round of the group stage. The latter was engaged for Karnataka against Haryana at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
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But most of the attention was on India’s former captain, Kohli, who had been playing his first first-class game for Delhi nearly 12 years since the time he faced Uttar Pradesh in Ghaziabad. The Arun Jaitley Stadium was nearly packed in all the blocks where the presence of the fans was allowed.
With Delhi bowling first on the opening day in the first innings, the crowd enjoyed seeing their star batter at the slip corridor for the entire day. The form of the number four batter in the five-day format hasn’t been up to the mark, with just 93 runs coming off his blade in six innings at home against New Zealand.
The 36-year-old celebrated his 30th Test century for India during the opening Test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2024-25 down under at the Optus Stadium in Perth. But he kept on repeating the same mistakes for the last four games and ended with just 190 runs in nine innings at an average of 23.75 with that lone century.
On the morning of January 31, the Arun Jaitley stadium felt a different buzz as Kohli walked into the middle. He left a few deliveries before opening his account with a light tap on the backfoot for a single. He drilled the right-arm pacer for a straight boundary before missing the very next delivery, which came back sharp at home and went through the gate to disturb the middle and leg stump.
India’s former all-rounder, Irfan Pathan, has used his X account (formerly known as Twitter) to reflect on the different challenges of the Ranji Trophy. He reckoned that in winter, the ball tends to seam a lot, helping the fast bowlers, while in north India, the black soil alters the behavior of the surface.
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“Indian domestic cricket, especially with the red ball, presents unique challenges. These tend to come up during the winter months. The pitches have more in them, and bowlers you’ve never faced can surprise you.” Pathan wrote on X.
“In northern India, the black soil alters how the pitch behaves, while the same bowler in the west of India might test you in a whole new way. You can score runs or get out, but there’s much more to it than that. This is exactly why I’ve been advocating for current Indian players to spend as much time as they can playing domestic cricket.” The former left-handed all-rounder concluded.