The Ranji Trophy could undergo yet another structural change in the 2018-19 season based on decisions made in the BCCI’s Special General Meeting on Friday. Board officials contemplated adding a Plate Group to the tournament, comprising the new teams that are now eligible to take part – Bihar and the North Eastern States.
The BCCI members met in Delhi and adopted a resolution that said all existing Ranji teams will make up the Elite Group, while the newcomers will form the Plate Group. The SGM did not have the approval of the Committee of Administrators, so it is unclear whether these decisions will be put in practice.
The board also discussed a promotion and relegation system, where the bottom two teams in the Elite Group and the top two teams in the Plate Group would take part in a qualifying super-league. At the end of the super league, the top two teams would play in the Elite Group the next season while the bottom two would play in the Plate Group.
The operational aspects of how such a tournament will run were not specificed, but it was decided at the SGM that this format would apply to all-age group tournaments as well in both men’s and women’s cricket.
With the addition of Chhattisgarh, there have been 28 teams in the Ranji Trophy for the past two seasons. Till 2016-17, the Elite-Plate structure was on the lines of teams being divided in three groups, with Group A and Group B being the Elite groups and Group C being the Plate group. With 28 teams in 2016-17, it meant Group C had 10 teams, and with the BCCI also trying the concept of neutral venues that season, it made for hectic travel schedules, with teams typically having just a day’s rest between travel and matches. In 2017-18, the neutral venues experiment and the Elite-Plate system was done away with, and four groups of seven teams were made.
Apart from the change in structure to the Ranji Trophy, the SGM also passed a resolution to “consider and to take decisions on the T20 tournaments hosted and organised by State Associations”. This will involve determining whether outstation players, who don’t have IPL contracts, can play in local leagues such as the Tamil Nadu Premier League, the Mumbai Cricket League or the Karnataka Premier League. A committee comprising BCCI office bearers and Sourav Ganguly, the chairman of BCCI’s technical committee, will decide on this. The resolution said they will also consider whether those players who have “briefly” played in the IPL can take part in these leagues, without specifying how many matches, or seasons, in the IPL would count as “briefly” having played the league.
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