Have foreign players ever played in India's Duleep Trophy? You will be surprised to know their names
Duleep Trophy: Duleep Trophy matches of this domestic season are being played these days. The tournament which started with matches between zonal teams, during the journey of the tournament not only the format of the tournament kept changing but also the name of the teams. In this season India A, India B, India C and India D teams are playing. Duleep Trophy means India's domestic first class match tournament and the common image is that unlike England or Australia, foreign players do not play in India's domestic cricket. Would you believe that not only foreign players but even foreign teams have played in Duleep Trophy. How and when?
For this, let's go to the year 2003 and it was 6th June when, at the Ranji Trophy Captain and Coach Conference in Mumbai, speaking on the issue of Team India cricketers not playing domestic tournaments, the then BCCI Chief Jagmohan Dalmiya said that too much international cricket is being played and cricketers don't have time to play domestic tournaments. He agreed that domestic cricket can only be improved by these seniors playing. At the same time, the then BCCI Technical Committee Chief Sunil Gavaskar also agreed to this and said that to make domestic cricket even better and more exciting, BCCI can invite foreign teams to play in the Duleep Trophy tournament from next year.
Since the English county season ends by September, the championship winning county or the Bangladesh team (in those years there was a discussion that the BCCI should help them improve their level and let them play in its domestic tournament) can play. The arrival of a team from abroad meant a total of 6 teams in the tournament (5 zonal teams were already playing) and by forming two groups of these, the number of matches would increase. This is what happened and from the 2003-04 season, foreign teams started playing in the Duleep Trophy. See their playing record:
England A: 2003–04 and 2007–08 seasons
Bangladesh A (Cricket Board XI): 2004–05 season
Zimbabwe Cricket Union President's XI: 2005–06 season
Sri Lanka A: 2006–07 season
This experiment of BCCI was a new beginning but it was not very successful because boards like England and Australia were reluctant to send a good team whereas
For the 2008-09 season, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa refused to send teams citing clashes with domestic season dates. By then, the issue of security had also cropped up in the country, although no one officially cited it as a reason. In that season, the teams were again played in a knock-out format with 5 teams. The BCCI also stopped the practice of inviting foreign teams here. The quality of the teams that came (or how they played) can be judged from the fact that no one won the Duleep Trophy and the truth is that apart from Sri Lanka A, no team even played the final.
In the Duleep Trophy, the only overseas player who competed against the domestic players in the limelight was Kevin Pietersen – two years before he played his first Test in India and not much was known about him then. His bat shone bright in the 2003-04 Duleep Trophy. Pietersen was then playing for Nottinghamshire and was uncapped and turned up with a 15-man England A team. The team included Matt Prior, Simon Jones, Michael Lumb, Sajid Mahmood, Ed Smith and James Tredwell, among others who would go on to play for England. The 23-year-old Pietersen played two matches, topping the season's run-charts with 345 runs at an average of 86.25, including two 100s and a 50. In the very first match, he made two 100s (104 and 115) against South Zone (whose attack also included young Sreesanth and experienced left-arm spinner Sunil Joshi) in Gurgaon, but England A still lost the match. It was a fantastic match and thanks to season's top Indian scorer Venugopal Rao's 228 (along with S Sriram 117 and S Badrinath 100*), South Zone achieved the target of 501 in the fourth innings by making 503-4.
After that, in the next match against East Zone (Dhoni was also in the team) in Amritsar, Pietersen scored 32 and 94 runs. The record of this tour played a special role in getting Pietersen a place in the England Test team and he made a memorable start in the 2005 Ashes. Believe me, some Indian newspapers of that time also wrote that Pietersen should be persuaded to stay in India so that he can qualify to play international cricket for India. This did not happen but the same Pietersen in the following years batted for the England team in 9 Tests on India tour, with two 100s and four 50s at an average of 43.93, which also included 186 runs in Mumbai in 2012, which is considered one of the best innings of Pietersen's career and Wisden later placed it at number 3 in the best Test innings of the 2010s.
By the way, did the discussion of foreign players or foreign teams playing in Duleep Trophy end with this? Almost everyone starts the discussion of foreign players playing in Duleep Trophy with England A playing in February-March 2004, but another story is that some foreign players had played in Duleep Trophy even before this. Four foreign players played in the 1962-63 season of Duleep Trophy and their playing was even more special because they did not play for any foreign team, but for India's zonal teams – Lester King for East Zone, Charlie Stairs for West Zone, Chester Watson for North Zone and Roy Gilchrist for South Zone. How this happened – this is a different story.
Comments are closed.