Duleep Trophy | Cream of India’s cricketing talent to duke it out for honours

Duleep Trophy, a crucial platform for India's cricket talent, sees top players compete in revamped zonal format.

In Indian domestic cricket’s recent history, Duleep Trophy is the laboratory. Played in the zonal format for more than five decades, the red-ball tournament, starting 2016-17, has seen players inorganically distributed into teams named blue, green and red, the colour of the ball changed and even played under lights.

Two years ago, it went back to the original region-wise format, only for the BCCI top-brass to shake things up again. From Thursday, four teams, uncreatively named A, B, C and D, will compete in this year’s competition, with A taking on B at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in the first round here while C meets D in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh.

For all the experiments, though, Duleep Trophy is not an event in search of meaning. India-A may well have become the stepping stone for national-team selection, but a big splash in the Duleep, especially when it is the season-opener, can make the ripples travel far and wide.

The tourney is also being held at a time when the BCCI has brandished a stick at those chasing only IPL carrots and made it clear that red-ball remains the premier format.

Against this backdrop, the cream of India’s cricketing talent, including national-team India regulars such as Shubman Gill, K.L. Rahul, Kuldeep Yadav and Yashasvi Jaiswal will all be in action. Swashbuckling wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant will return to red-ball cricket for the first time since his horrific car accident in December 2022.

With the home Test series against Bangladesh just two weeks away and India-A set to embark on a tour of Australia in November, shadowing the national team, the Ajit Agarkar-led selection panel and the new team-management helmed by head coach Gautam Gambhir will be looking at the Duleep Trophy for a few cues to shore up the bench strength.

High on the wish list will be the unearthing of a back-up opener to Yashasvi and Rohit Sharma. With Virat Kohli and Rahul expected to slot back straight in after missing nearly the whole of the home series against England, a handful, led by Sarfaraz Khan, will look to make the grade as middle-order reinforcements.