Ranji's Neglect and the IPL Glare: Indian Cricket's Hidden Ledger

A fast bowler's name was missing from the selection list. In his place was a player who had featured in only four domestic matches the previous season — but who held a franchise contract. That was the moment I understood that Indian cricket's real scorecard is written not on the field, but in boardrooms and at auction tables. I have read Ranji Trophy scorebooks for four decades, and even now the most attention goes to the names that are not on the list.

The structure of Indian domestic cricket was once the spine of the national team. In the seventies and eighties, when I worked on the sports desk of The Times of India, Ranji match reports were treated with the same seriousness as Test cricket. Zonal selectors sat in the stands, noted players' techniques, and their recommendations went straight up to national selection. It was a system in which a cricketer had to prove his place — in the dust of domestic seasons, across five days of Ranji, in the grounds of Duleep and Deodhar.

Then came 2026, and the IPL overturned the economy of the game. I will not say the IPL killed Test cricket — that is a cheap conclusion, and I have seen many cheap conclusions prove wrong over four decades. What happened is more subtle: the IPL rendered invisible the tournament beneath it. The Ranji Trophy did not die, but it stopped being seen the way it once was. Coverage dwindled, audiences shrank, and most importantly — its weight in the selection process diminished.

The data bears witness to this shift. Until a decade ago, roughly three-quarters of the Indian Test team came from long Ranji seasons. Today that ratio has changed — many young players arrive at the national team directly from the IPL's short format, and domestic red-ball cricket has become a formality for them. This is not merely a question of selection; it is a question of the ecology of skill. Five-day batting, wearing down the ball, sustaining patience in the heat of a session — these are the qualities that develop only in Ranji, and that serve the national team on overseas tours.

I remember Adelaide in December 2026. Empty stands under Covid restrictions, and India bowled out for 36 in their second innings. That day I did not watch the match — I listened to a team forgetting how to bat. I stayed in my hotel room for nearly eight hours, refused three television crosses, and wrote a long essay. After that day I made a rule for myself: one human detail before any statistic. Because 36 is a number, but behind it was a player afraid of his own form.

I watched Harmanpreet Kaur's innings in Derby in 2026 through the same principle. In the Women's World Cup semi-final against Australia she made 171 off 115 balls — it was not merely an innings, it was an attempt to correct a national memory. That day I left the scorecard in the press box and wrote about anger turning into geometry. The desk said it was running too long; I filed it anyway. That piece began my 'emotional ledger' of women's cricket — the notebook in which I started asking memory questions instead of outcome questions. That ledger remained my spine right through the 2026 final.

Now comes the most uncomfortable part. The conventional reading of Indian cricket is that the IPL and Ranji can coexist — that a young player can gain fame in a franchise and cement his technique in domestic matches. The argument sounds clean, and I hesitate before dismissing it outright. But it has a flaw: it treats a player's time as an unlimited resource. A 22-year-old's body and attention are both finite. When the franchise season rolls through twelve months — auction, training camp, tournament, return — Ranji falls naturally out of his calendar.

There is another layer beneath this that is discussed less. The selection system itself has shifted its centre. When I went to Ranji matches in the eighties, a zonal selector watched a player's technique in the field, read his stance, gauged his capacity for patience. Today that place is taken by franchise scouts armed with data — strike rate, economy, boundary percentage. Data is not bad, but it offers no measure of the five-day examination. This is the chasm where Ranji's medium-pace bowler disappears, and where a batsman who can bat three days on a slow pitch gets stuck.

How vast India's domestic machinery is, few outside India fully grasp. Imagine a second-choice team that could beat several Test-playing nations — that depth exists only because of Ranji, Duleep and Deodhar. But that depth survives only when the selection system sees it. When the domestic professional on the margins feels that his Ranji carries no weight, the system begins to hollow out from within.

In February 2026 I followed the IPL mega auction not as a spreadsheet but as a transfer window. Hardik Pandya was released by Mumbai Indians, and Gujarat Titans bought him for 15 crore. Five months later he led the new franchise to the title, beating Rajasthan Royals by 7 wickets in the final. I spent that week among agents and trainers, not only among purse figures. I wanted to know what you lose when you are stripped of one shirt and handed another. Fifteen crore is a number; the man behind it wakes at six.

That was the moment the two ledgers of Indian cricket surfaced for me. One is written in the glare of broadcast — excitement, fours and sixes, franchise glory. The other runs beneath it — the Ranji scorebook, board minutes, zonal selection files, and the names that never enter any conversation. My job is to read both ledgers together.

One thing about this season troubles me persistently. There have been performances in domestic cricket that make it seem as if a player has carried an entire season alone. Yet when the selection list arrives, that same name vanishes. I ask the question: is there something lacking in his bowling, or is his lack that he holds no franchise contract? I do not have a direct answer, and I will not level accusations without evidence. But the existence of the question is itself testimony that a door in the system is cracking.

This does not mean women's cricket is bound by the same logic — the story there is different. Since 2026 the women's game has found a place after years of neglect. But the same question applies: will the World Cup title and the broadcast promise become a permanent structure, or will it too be forgotten the way Ranji was? The 2026 title is a beginning, not an ending.

Sometimes I am asked why I write so old — it is 2026, why talk about 2026 cricket. My answer is that those who do not read their own ledger do not even know when they are losing something. From 2026 to 2026, from 2026 to 2026, and from 2026 to 2026 — does anything really cross between these milestones, or is it only memory that survives? That question ends every piece I write, and I believe it should be the question of every Indian cricket fan.

The Ranji scorebooks are still being filled. Every week, on some ground, a name is entered that will never appear on broadcast. In that one innings lies the whole meaning of his life — that hope, that exhaustion, that fear of being left out. I believe Indian cricket's true strength lies in that innings, not in the auction purse. The question is whether our system will keep reading it, or whether it will slowly become invisible the way its audiences once did.