5 things to look forward to in the upcoming Ranji season

The 83rd edition of the Ranji Trophy begins on 6 October 2016. Being the premier domestic competition in India, players from all teams will try to give their best in order to catch the eyes of the selectors and come in contention for selection in the Indian team. The competition thus, is going to be intense.

As always, there is lots to look forward to in this Ranji season, but this time, the season promises to be all the more exciting as there are a few new things that will be seen this year.

Let’s have a look at 5 things which all cricket lovers would look forward to:

#1 Neutral Venues

This Ranji season will be the first ever to see teams playing at neutral venues. What this essentially means is – the venue for the match won’t be the “home” venue for either team. For example, the match between Mumbai and Tamil Nadu, who are in the same group this season, will be played neither in Mumbai nor in Chennai; it’ll be played at CH Bansi Lal Cricket Stadium, Lahli, Rohtak.

This will ensure two things:

- That the pitches can’t be doctored to suit the needs of the home team, so both teams will start on an even base, with neither having an extra advantage. This came into notice very clearly last season when Ravindra Jadeja took 6 consecutive five wickets hauls to storm his way back into the Indian test team, on pitches that were made specifically to suit his kind of spin bowling. We saw matches getting over in 2 days and there was nothing the batsmen could do on such tracks.

- Players get exposure of playing in all kinds of conditions that will develop their all round game. Earlier, players got used to playing on certain kinds of “home” pitches which meant that while their skills on such pitches were improving, they were not making a lot of progress in terms of their technique when it comes to playing on surfaces that are substantially different from their home pitches.

Hence, neutral venues would make sure that such cases don’t happen and the wickets that are prepared are made to ensure good quality cricket without giving an edge to a particular team.