A very un-Tamil Nadu-like Ranji season

It is January 5, 2017 in Rajkot. A team that always looks extremely strong on paper and does well through most part of the group stage bows out of the tournament during a knock out. It makes the fan in me disappointed and at times irate, seeing how some teams with far lesser big names punch their way up, beautifully signifying that the whole is better than the sum of the parts and play enterprising cricket in making a mark in a Ranji season.

Why cannot Tamil Nadu do this regularly and go one step further and win that title would be the question that me and a countless other TN fans and critics be flummoxed with, year in and year out.

Not on that day. At least not me. TN seemed to have some kind of a satanic fate that never let it discover a potent long-term pace bowling prospect who can be consistently incisive. The 2016-17 season solved this problem when they discovered a troika in Aswin Crist, T Natarajan and K Vignesh.

They bowled together in eight out of the ten games that TN played, often conjuring up inspiring spells that kept the opposition under the heat and accounted for about 65% of the number of wickets picked up by TN in the entire season. The most exciting part of this trio – their average age is 23, and coaches and fans had a lot to look forward to in the future.

The January 5 loss left me craving to see future success than crib about that day. Besides doing most other things as they would usually do every season such as consistent top order batting and spinners doing their job effectively, this pace bowling turnaround was the greatest gain from the last season.

If all these click yet again for TN, they must surely be somewhere near that elusive title for the upcoming season. If you would have put a Gujarat fan next to me and measured our happiness using some index, I would have won.

Fast forward to almost 11 months and TN fare poorly in the group stage and are knocked out of the tournament, having failed to notch up even a single victory in the process. I seek to analyse a few factors that went wrong in these couple of months – as compared to the previous season – for the TN side which had top players like M Vijay, R Ashwin, Dinesh Karthik, Abhinav Mukund and Vijay Shankar represent the side during distinct phases of the season.

1. Who are our pacers?

In what would go on to be a telling blow for the rest of the season, TN started without Aswin Crist or T Natarajan and never had the services of the two throughout the six games due to injury and rehabilitation.

K Vignesh - who was the find of the last season and their leading wicket-taker - bowled with vigour as always to pick up 24 wickets, twice as much as the second highest, at an average of 21.5 and a strike rate of a shade under 50, repeating the previous season’s performance at a better average and strike rate though playing four matches lesser. He has made a case for himself as one of the brightest pace bowling prospect in the country.

Sadly, he never had adequate support at the other end with comeback man V Yomahesh featuring only in the latter 4 matches and being the only other seamer to play more than half of TN’s matches. Others chipped in during different games, and the side had as many as six different opening bowling combinations on various occasions which underlined the inconsistency in opportunities and performances.

2. Inconsistent top order and batting woes

While TN never really enjoyed successful opening stands last season and had constant changes in opening partners to Abhinav Mukund, this season saw some evenness in three matches as regular India opener Murali Vijay opened the batting with skipper Abhinav Mukund.

Regrettably, this did not result in any successful opening stands as the openers put up just a single hundred partnership and never managed crossing fifty on any other occasion. While in the previous year, Abhinav Mukund and Kaushik Gandhi were often among the runs, especially with the latter soaking up all the new ball pressure and making it easier for the batsmen coming in to face, this season, neither of them notched up big scores.

Skipper Mukund crossed fifty only twice in nine innings, whereas Kaushik Gandhi found himself out of the team for half the games, averaging a mere 15 after 6 innings with a top score of 35. In hindsight, from a fan’s point of view, he should have been trusted and handed a permanent spot for the whole season after carrying the top order in a breakthrough 2016-17 season.

While four batsmen in the top and middle order averaged above 50 in the previous season, with individual scores breaching 150 four times and 200 once, and the top six notching up a combined 12 centuries, the chop and change pattern of the playing XI and batting order this season saw only the Baba twins – Aparajith and Indrajith – average over 50 and score three centuries between them. The rest of the top order had only 4 centuries between them, and just two scores over 150 with the top score being 159. While Washington Sundar notched up that highest score in the one match he opened the batting in this season, he never featured at the top again even with M Vijay gone on national duty.

While N Jagadeesan, his replacement at the top did not fare too badly, Washington, a regular opener for his club side needn’t have been pushed back to the lower middle order when he had done well in the one opportunity he got opening the batting – a classic case of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ tag.

3. While one half of the side does the job, other half does not

K Vignesh was the only one posing threats, unsupported from the other side

Barring the rain-affected Tripura game in Chennai, all the other matches saw either the batting or the bowling fail to perform. On more than four occasions, either one batsman from the top order or V Yomahesh had to rally the lower order and outdo the top order in scoring runs for the team in averting a low total. There were far too many batting collapses that do not justify the batting quality of this side. Likewise, on four occasions when the bowlers had picked up at least five wickets of the opposition for a paltry score, they let the lower middle order dominate and ended up conceding the lead or soak up precious time. With just K Vignesh constantly posing threats, lack of support from the other end – especially from the spinners barring Washington Sundar – left TN high and dry during most matches, and particularly so when they failed to bowl out Odisha and conceded the lead after putting up 530 on the board.

4. Four-day cricket today demands some top order intent

Baba AparajithWhat do Mayank Agarwal, Anmolpreet Singh, Prithvi Shaw, Sanju Samson and Faiz Fazal have in common? They are all top order batsmen who have scored heavily this season at fairly quick strike rates and in the process, helping their teams qualify to the knockout stage. While it is not necessary to possess this quality to be a red ball cricketer, there needs to be at least one aggressor to complement all the accumulators at the top of the order for TN.

Dinesh Karthik often did this job regularly over the years for the side, but could not play more than one innings this season due to national commitments. N Jagadeesan and Washington Sundar seem to fit the bill, but played far too less matches at the top to be judged on this basis. Being unable to score rapidly at crucial junctures through the tournament led TN to not only lose momentum while batting but also led them to being unable to put the opposition on the backfoot on numerous occasions where they should have.

In the end, individual performances were not strong enough in helping TN’s case in their push for qualification.

The Baba twins were the highest run-getters for TN this season, but were ranked 40th and 46th respectively in terms of runs at the end of the league phase. In contrast to this, during the last season, TN had four batsmen among the top 25 run-getters, with skipper Abhinav Mukund leading from the front at 9th place. Similarly, while K Vignesh was ranked 12th with 24 scalps at the end of the league phase this season – no other bowler featured in the top 50 – the previous season saw two pacers in K Vignesh and Aswin Crist ranked 9th and 11th respectively in the highest wicket-takers list.

Some bright spots in a dull couple of months

Washington Sundar did well

Young off-spinning all-rounder Washington Sundar had a middling but much improved second Ranji season, and an outstanding Duleep Trophy before Ranji Trophy. His lack of top order opportunities is a talking point as he has shown great composure at the top and batted there all his junior cricket. Likewise, he deserves a larger share of the bowling duty – often, he was only brought in as the fifth or sixth bowling change. V Yomahesh has had a great comeback season.

Less than a decade ago, he was a budding cricketer, having played for TN in all formats and even featuring in the IPL regularly. His comeback, and especially his improved batting will hold good stead for TN in the upcoming seasons. K Vignesh shone throughout the season, except for one match in between where he went wicketless. He bowled tirelessly long spells each game, and was right on the money more often than not. As TN’s number XI batsman, on quite a few occasions, he wielded the willow in a composed fashion, attacking and defending as required and lending much needed support to the batsman at the other end.

Limited overs cricket is something that Tamil Nadu has found consistent success in. With several cricketers having been exposed to higher cricketing honours in the IPL, A-team tours and international cricket, they often show dominance in the 50 over format. It is safe to say that mistakes look smaller in a 100-overs game than a 360-overs one, and TN often capitalise on the crunch moments and build their victories on it. However, with Dinesh Karthik likely to be out of the squad on national duty for at least a phase of the group stage, TN needs the likes of N Jagadeesan to step up and perform with consistently, the way he did in the 2016-17 Deodhar Trophy. While a fan looks forward to another successful coloured-clothing season with the possibility of unlocking new performers, he still waits for the day when the Ranji Trophy is finally lifted again.