Abhinav Mukund, the skipper of Tamil Nadu Ranji Trophy team has criticised the concept of neutral venues in Ranji Trophy as he believes that there are still a lot of complications in this concept which needs to be sorted out. In addition to that, he raised a voice in favour of a team getting a chance to play a home game as well. Mukund slammed the step introduced by BCCI this year and said, “There are no pros. There are only cons.”

“First of all, every association has to provide cricket balls. But I have to address the issue of match balls before every game. In every game, umpires and match referees have come to us and have asked us for balls. I mean, I cannot have such a problem in a knockout game. In a Ranji Trophy semifinal, if you come and tell me (before the match), there are no balls in the ball box, I simply don’t understand that.”

BCCI introduced this concept to omit the Ranji Ranji Trophy teams of reaping the undue home advantage as earlier, a Ranji team used to play four out of eight league stage matches at home and used to garner advantage from home pitches by preparing the deck in their favour, like we saw Ravindra Jadeja gaining undue benefits from dry Rajkot pitch.

He scalped 38 wickets in three games he played there but Abhinav Mukund played down the concept and said that a player does not give a damn about the wickets, “No one actually gives a damn about the wickets that are being prepared. Everyone’s playing safe, which is why people are scoring more than 1000 runs, and I don’t see many spinners coming into play. I don’t like this concept mainly because of the fact that there’s no continuity. You play throughout the year in one condition it’s really important to play at home.

Further, he added that playing home games, especially for a debutant is a big thing and this concept has denied an opportunity to a debutant to play a game at his home ground, which is a dream for every player, “These are the kind of things you grow up with as a cricketer. So many cricketers who have made their debut for us this year haven’t played at Chepauk. Playing at home has always been a big thing for me.”

This was the first time when BCCI introduced the concept of neutral venues and the board will review their decision after the completion of the tournament and will analyse whether this was a successful move or not?