Eye on Ranji - I
It will be fascinating to see whether the Ranji Trophy competition manages to hold relevance in the era of the IPL and Champions League Twenty20. In a four-part preview series, ESPNcricinfo profiles the Super League teams.
Uttar Pradesh
Along with Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh have been the best performers in the Ranji Trophy over the last five years. Both these sides have made three finals each during the said period. There the similarities end: Mumbai have won all three, UP just one.
UP have lost one semi-final besides. And every department of their game has taken turns in disintegrating in those three big matches they have lost in the last five years. In the 2007-08 final, the batsmen wasted a first-innings lead their bowlers secured by bowling Delhi out for 290. In the 2008-09 final, their fielders kept dropping chances, letting Mumbai recover from 55 for 4 on the first morning. In the semi-final last season, an attack featuring Praveen Kumar, RP Singh and Piyush Chawla bowled without inspiration, and Karnataka batted them out.
Looking at the draw this year, UP will realise that getting to the knockout stages won't be that difficult. On paper, they are among the three top sides in Group B, Karnataka and Baroda being the other two. Punjab will be dangerous floaters in that group, with Yuvraj Singh likely to play a substantial part of the season.
Still UP have the side to make it to the knockouts. Praveen should be available during India Tests. RP and Chawla, no longer part of India plans, should be inspired to make a point or two. Sudeep Tyagi and Bhuvneshwar Kumar will hope to reprise the kind of efforts that marked their debut seasons. Suresh Raina will of course be missed, and Mohammad Kaif will have to carry the batting.
What they did last season
UP just couldn't master Karnataka last season, which began with an outright defeat to them in the first round and ended in a huge first-innings deficit in the semi-final.
In between they regrouped well, following up that defeat with two first-innings leads, and then two outright wins - against Delhi and Bengal - in a late surge that took them to the knockouts. They got an easy quarter-final, facing a Plate League team, Assam, and making it to the semi-final easily, where they ran into a red-hot Karnataka led by a Rahul Dravid double-century.
That they struggled last season is evident from how only one of their specialist batsmen, Parvinder Singh, averaged more than 40. What hurt them more was the averages of their regular bowlers: Chawla took 32 wickets at 27.56, and RP 27 at 33.
Men to watch
Praveen, easily their best bowler, should be available for four out of their six league matches. India's Test schedule works well for UP in that regard. Praveen will want to ensure their progression to the quarters, not the least because he will be available to play in those before leaving for India's limited-overs games in South Africa.
Even though Parvinder Singh did well with the bat last season, scoring three centuries in his 549 runs, UP will need much better from captain Kaif, who didn't score a century last season and averaged 27.38. Especially in the absence of Raina.
After reaching the quarter-finals in the 2008-09 season, Gujarat reverted to type in 2009-10. The team won just one of their seven games while losing three to finish next to last in Group A, ahead only of Hyderabad, who failed to win a single game.
The side struggled with both bat and ball. They were bowled out for less than 100 twice, and only captain Parthiv Patel averaged over 40. While medium pacer Siddharth Trivedi had another good season, taking 19 wickets at 17.21, the bowling attack was depleted when Mohnish Parmar, the 22-year-old offspinner who took 41 wickets in 2008-09, had to change his action after the board determined it was illegal. Parmar wound up playing just one game and failed to take a wicket.
What they did last season
Gujarat started brightly with a comfortable win over Orissa, but it would prove to be a false dawn. The team drew its next two matches against Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad, before enduring a string of three straight defeats as the team's batting failed time and again.
The first loss came against Punjab, by an innings and 42 runs. Further embarrassment was inflicted by Railways, who bowled Gujarat out for 91 on the way to an innings victory. That was followed by a six-wicket defeat to Himachal Pradesh, where Gujarat led by 52 runs after the first innings, but capitulated for 87 in their second innings. The losing streak came to an unexpected end when they managed a high-scoring draw against eventual champions Mumbai.
Men to watch
Gujarat are a young side - nine of the 15 players are under 26, including Parthiv - and they have three batsmen who will be making their first-class debuts. Prathmesh Parmar, Rohit Dahiya and Rajdeeb Darbar have all been rewarded for consistent performances at the under-19 and under-22 levels. How these youngsters do could go a long way towards improving on last season.
Parthiv, who captained India in the Emerging Players Tournament in Australia in August, should be the mainstay of the batting once again. He led from the front in 2009-10, scoring 727 runs at an average of 66.09, with three hundreds. Trivedi will continue to lead the attack, but how Parmar fares with his revamped action could determine the arc of his career. The offspinner was among Gujarat's best bowlers in their Tri-series win in Kenya earlier this year, taking 7 wickets at an average of 18.14 in four 50-over games.
Since their promotion to the Super League three seasons ago, Orissa have settled into a comfort zone: they consistently do enough to avoid relegation but not enough to progress to the knockouts. Each of their past three mediocre Ranji seasons has been undermined by poor starts: beginning with two losses in 2007-08, a draw (without a first-innings lead) and a defeat in the next year, and opening their campaign with their only reverse of the season last time.
It's been nearly a decade since medium-pacer Debasis Mohanty and opener Shiv Sundar Das represented India, belying the hope that the pair - the first players from the state to make the national team - would open the door for more Orissa cricketers to make it to the international stage. The state's closest link to the Indian team these days is not a player, but the Orissa Cricket Association chief and former allrounder, Ranjib Biswal, who has been manager of the national team over the past six months.
The team still relies heavily on its old hands - Das remains the captain of the side and perhaps their most important batsman. The two Mohantys - Debasis and Basanth - who carried Orissa's fast bowling for the first two seasons after the state's elevation continue to be instrumental to the team's fortunes, but now have the support of 20-year-old medium-pacer Alok Chandra Sahoo, who made an impact in his first season with 17 wickets.
The main worry for Orissa is the inability of their batsmen to make big scores - only six centuries in the previous three seasons. In a tournament like the Ranji Trophy, where a majority of the matches are drawn and first-innings leads are crucial, if Orissa's new coach Manas Ranjan Ray can't get his batsmen to pile on the runs the side will continue to be also-rans.
What they did last season
Orissa finished in fifth place in Group A last season, managing to draw every match after their opening defeat to Gujarat. There were no wins in the campaign, though they should have picked up at least one - they were unable to prise out the final wicket against relegation-bound Hyderabad, the last pair batting out 7.1 overs to secure a draw. The bowling did its job in the second half of the season, bowling out Punjab and Himachal Pradesh below 200 to set up vital first-innings leads. Two other Orissa matches were ruined by rain, with the teams unable to complete even the first innings.
Players to watch
Forget producing players who make the national team, Orissa have no one regularly featuring even in the level just below the international level: there was not a single player in the Rest of India side for the Irani Cup or in the Challenger Trophy or even in the wider field of the IPL.
Two players have done well over the past few seasons but, like their team itself, not well enough to hit the headlines. Niranjan Behara, the 26-year-old batsman from Cuttack, has been their most consistent batsman, making at least 350 runs in the last two years, but has only one century in his career so far.
Basanth Mohanty, the 23-year-old medium-pacer, has bagged at least 20 wickets in each of the past three seasons, but hasn't hit the 30-wicket mark in any of them. Unless he does, the national selectors aren't likely to be interested.