TN Ranji Cricket The Fall

No light at the end of  the TN Cricketing Highway

Flat Unconducive wickets in the first division league, Too much glamour around IPL and TNPL, Lack of focus at the grass roots level and the continuing aggressive corporate warfare have contributed to a downfall in TN cricket

Business minded cricket academies unfairly pushing their players into league and age group cricket  has also damaged cricket in the city
In 1978, TN bowled out AP for 29 and routed them - Four Decades later, Andhra is at the top of the Ranji league while TN is at the bottom

                         TNCA website

Tamil Nadu has had one of the most disastrous starts to a Ranji Season with the team firmly rooted to the bottom (17th out of 18 teams) of the table after 5 games, three of them on home soil. And really this comes as no surprise to those that have followed TN cricket this decade. It has been a long time coming, now.  It has actually been a surprise that it has taken this long to hit the bottom. It has been a decade of IPL and TNPL, the glorification of these formats has led to a loss of focus on the longer version. No great infrastructure development, big success of the IPL team and the initial hype around the TNPL have all taken the focus away from the crying need to strengthen the foundation and improving cricket at the grass roots. Almost all the cricket in the first division league in Madras are on flat wickets, except when the top teams play the bottom ones, when they go for green tops or big turners. TN U16 and U19 teams have been knocked out this year in the league phase and they have not really provided the feeder service for the Ranji team. There are no players U19 players from TN in the National squad.

TNCA League Cricket in the 2000s

In well over a decade of captaining lower division league teams in Madras, I got a sense of where cricket was headed in Tamil Nadu. The last of this was a privately run league team and I managed almost all of the expenses including taking care of the travel expenses of some of the teenaged players.

Cricket turned into a huge business for the ex-cricketers. They saw an opportunity to mint money from upcoming cricketers. As the years progressed, more and more cricket academies including some credible former cricketers approached me with interesting ‘deals’. They offered to take care of the entire expenses for the year (cricket kit, gear, food, water, balls, travel expenses etc) in exchange for opportunities for their wards in the league season. More opportunities in the league meant more money into the academy from the wards. The academies are increasingly under pressure from the parents to get their students into various teams – the first step in that process being an entry into lower division league cricket followed by inclusion in the city teams of U13 and other age group categories. And the parents are willing to pay a price for this, for they see this as an important phase in the child’s cricketing career. Cricket is no more just a sport that it was (in TN) 3-4 decades ago. It is a business. It is a lucrative career.There is a lot of money at stake.

Academies’ and one on one coaching influence on cricket

Roll on, well over a decade later, in a lower division match that I umpired in 2018, a captain known to me for three decades kept going back to a young 15 year old fast bowler despite him being thrashed all over the park. Reason – the bowler was a ward at his one–one academy in Mylapore and there was a need to promote him at all levels, even if it meant being unfair to other bowlers in the team. Wickets in the league would help the boy in the U16 selection.  While other bowlers that day went at 2 or 3 runs an over, this fast bowler bowled his full quota of 15overs giving away 90runs. He did pick up 4wickets. And with statistics playing a vital role, it would not matter that the match was lost because of over bowling the most expensive bowler of the day but those 4 wickets would up add to the tally for the year and improve his chances of a place in the state squad in the age group category At the end of the innings I overheard an innocent question from a young player to his father “Do I need to take one on one coaching to be given bowling in a match”. The father had no answer to the question.

This is not a one off incident anymore. Academies actively push their wards at all levels in cricket. Individual coaches try to push their students through the selectors. Parents are seen at the grounds all the time talking to the selectors.

The Selectors

With the Lodha Committee making a certain number of Ranji matches as a pre requisite to the choice of a state selector, opportunities have quite unexpectedly fallen on those who have not tracked or been associated with TN cricket for decades. While those with Ranji experience from the decades gone by could don the role as sincerely and in as committed a way as possible, the point remains that many of them have not really watched enough of cricket in TN for decades. Will it be fair on the players to have a state selector not watching too many of the matches that they play before the selection.Even the Senior State Selectors ( Ranji Trophy) haven’t really watched most of the matches in recent years and that hasn't instilled confidence in the minds of first division players. Is it not important to watch the players before taking a call especially when many factors other than just runs and wickets can be relevant to a junior player’s selection – the attitude of a player, the circumstance under which he scored runs and took wickets, the contribution to a winning cause and so on, which mere statistics may not reveal.

Conflict of interest – Chairman of selection committee as a Match Referree

Through this decade, Chairman of the TN State Selection Committee also donned the role of Match Referee. These roles come with power, fame and name in addition to a lot of money that’s on offer (for match referees). While there was a TN Ranji match going on in one city, the chairman of the State Selectors was a match referee in another Ranji match several 100s of kms away.

It was power and money at play at the same time. While the Chairmanship offered power and name, the role of the match referee brought in money that was really lucrative, something that would have been difficult for anyone to ignore, even if it meant a conflicting role. There was really no accountability. Should a chairman of selectors be watching his state team play or be at another ground as a match referee? These questions never seem to have been raised. Also during the decade gone by, there seemed to have been no vision chalked out in terms of where they (the selection committee) wanted to take TN cricket. For example, this decade a chairman of the Sr. State Selection committee refused to talk to the media ( including to this writer) on the pretext that he had been asked by the TNCA to not talk about TN cricketing/ selection matters to the outside public and to cricket writers. With so much at stake and a huge fan following, could the chairman of a senior state selection committee remain silent for 5 years not airing his views on the choice of the team and on the direction of TN cricket and the performance of the team. But that is what happened. The Chairman  simply followed ‘instructions’ of the TNCA and did not speak up once during his period as the chairman of the Sr. State Selection Committee. During the decade, one simply did not get a sense of the long term vision for the state team. And we are now seeing the impact of those years of ignored vision with the results in Ranji cricket

Credible Coaches

The choice of coaches too seem to have been baffling this decade. In one year, out another. The relationship between the top players and the coach has not been at its best through most of the decade. Very little seems to have been done on this front.  No one in the cricketing circles in TN has quite understood the process of the choice of coaches and their accountability. For the huge amount of fee paid to them annually, there really seems to be very little accountability. There seems to have been 'no deliverables" chalked out for the state coaches appointed at different levels.

Flat Wickets at all levels

If you look at the results of TN teams in recent years, you will find that the team has performed much better in shorter formats than the longer version, a clear indication of flat wickets in the city. Spinners who are asked to not give away runs in league cricket has been the order of the day. Hence they seem to be better at doing a containing job than in the art of wicket taking. As is well known, it is the bowlers with the wickets that win you matches in the longer format. TN has just not developed fast bowlers or spinners with the wicket taking ability. 

In the decades gone by, youngsters coming up the ranks played on different kinds of surfaces - matting wickets even in first division league, fast green tops against the best of fast bowlers in the state and many times a square turner. This helped a great deal during the foundation stage of their career. 

However, in recent times, top order players after amassing runs in the local league and age group tournaments on flat wickets have often been caught out on green tops when they play State matches in another region. In the battle for the Palayampatti shield, the top corporates have often put out 'flat' wickets playing it safe. Hence the top Ranji cricketers playing against each other in domestic first division league are not up against challenging conditions. Very rarely in recent years, has one witnessed a top contest between bat and ball among the top teams in the first division. 

It has been years since TN has produced a top class fast bowler for the long format. Aswin Crist and T Natarajan have been the only real fast bowlers in recent years. There is a dearth of fast bowlers who could win Ranji matches for you, especially in away conditions. This year, Natarajan has been at the top of wickets list for TN after 5 matches and yet not once has he been provided with favourable wickets to suit his bowling in our home matches.  Spinners for a large part have been containing bowlers more suited to the shorter formats.

Even at the U16, U19 and U23 levels, it is the same story. Tons of runs in local matches on flat batting tracks and the batsmen found out against good fast bowlers and on turning tracks in away matches in state tournaments has meant that TN has crashed out in all age group tournaments in the longer format this year.

Non Stop Cricket in Peak Summer
This year in peak summer, first division cricketers played non stop cricket through an entire month to finish the schedule of 2019-20 season. And in no time, shortly after, the new 20-21 season had begun. The three day once prestigious long format Buchi Babu Tournament has been dispensed with and made way for the T20 TNPL. Buchi Babu Tourney had for long been the stepping stone for budding youngsters wanting to play for the state.

R Ashwin - The Only real Long Format  Bowler from TN this decade
This decade, only R Ashwin has emerged as a top quality international bowler in tests from the State. There have been no other bowlers, spinner or fast bowler even on the fringe from Tamil Nadu .Of course, he came through a phase when wickets were better and gave bowlers something to work on.

  From his twitter page

As years have passed and with amount of cricket that has been played, the quality of wickets has dropped drastically in the city. No corporate in the city has a second ground of their own. While the focus has been on investment in players and the exorbitant salaries paid to teenaged cricketers these days, the corporates have missed out on improving the cricketing infrastructure in the city so much so that the top batsmen eyeing the next level do not have high quality fast paced/ big turning tracks to bat on, even in the nets. 

The Downfall of TN cricket

Academies’ influence in age group selection right from U13, the emerging role of parents in selection matters, the decades long corporate conflicts and their influence in selection, the glamour of IPL and TNPL and the lack of infra development have all contributed to the downfall of TN cricket. Look at the scenario this year – International cricketers Abhinav, Vijay, Dinesh Karthik, Vijay Shankar, R Ashwin were all part of the TN playing XI for the first match of the Ranji season. And suddenly for the next couple of matches all of them were away for a variety of reasons – personal commitments to injuries to ‘rested’. A star studded line up gave way to many debutants. And suddenly you found 5 new players coming into the playing XI right after the first match of the new season, quite a few not really suited to the longer version of the game. For a state match that included international star R Ashwin, TN played 4-5 spinners in the XI this season!!! Just last week, a U23 state player was informed of his omission through the following text message ‘You are removed for the next match’ leaving him in tears. His replacement in the team was someone who had scored less than one third of the runs of the axed player.The selection process leaves a lot to be desired

It remains no surprise that TN is languishing at the penultimate position in the Ranji Table after 5 matches and has been knocked out of age group tournaments. For long, there has been no incentive to play for the team. A player sacrificing his wicket for the team’s cause is not rewarded in TN cricket and hence you find each playing for his own self and for his own safety in the team. In a story I had written earlier on a match in Coimbatore, AP was bundled out for 29 by TN 4 decades ago  after an incisive spell by Bharath Kumar at the Forest College ground (http://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2018/03/coimbatore-cricket-grounds.html). Cricketing life has come a full circle. Today, AP tops the Ranji table while TN is down at the bottom. It is unlikely that there will be a turnaround anytime in the near future unless the coaches, selectors, the corporates and administrators at all levels come together as a group and create a conducive atmosphere for  a fair battle between bat and ball, a meritorious selection policy and an incentive for team play.

The Solution
Play top first division league matches on green tops / turners
Provide green tops and square turners at the nets for first division / State players
Announce a 5 year vision for the State Ranji squad - Build a team for the long term
Choose Coaches and Selectors with credibility and long term commitment
Ensure State Selectors watch all first division matches
Ensure age group Selectors watch school matches and league matches 
Bring transparency into the selection process
Get the hard hitting views of credible and vocal cricketers on the improvement of state cricket and go about implementing their ideas