By: Tarish Bhatt
A certain section within the Indian cricket board (BCCI) may be open to the idea of hosting all Ranji Trophy matches at neutral venues, but it would be a logistical nightmare if such a proposal becomes a reality.
According to some of the mandarins of the BCCI, increasing the man-power of the ground and pitches committee is the best way to tackle the unnecessary tampering of the home team.
Sources said that the board isn’t quite impressed with the way some teams have used their home advantage and prepared wickets to suit their style of attack.
Either the pitches, prepared at home, were deliberately made belters to suit the batting units or the wickets are tampered to help the spinners.
Despite repeated reminders from the BCCI to ensure that the home teams don’t walk away with all the advantages, the state affiliated units have done little to stop the menace.
It has come to such a point that even the top office-bearers of the board are demanding to change the current system to playing the Ranji Trophy league matches away from home.
Reportedly, the technical committee of the board may discuss the issue at length with the domestic captains and coaches to do away with the current system of only playing the knock-out matches in neutral venues.
But before the deliberation takes place, the board also need to keep the additional cost of having all the game neutral venues. Given the way cricket is played, a system of monitoring the pitch preparation before every Ranji Trophy game by the BCCI is must.
Most importantly, some needs to tell these domestic teams that cricket won’t grow if they adopt the age-old tactics of using the home advantage. Time has changed and so has cricket.
To do well away from home, India needs to change the attitude towards playing on sporting wickets at the domestic level. After all, this is the only route through which the future stars could be produced.
