New Delhi: India's biggest domestic cricket tournament Ranji Trophy has started with a bang. But a serious controversy has arisen over the Board of Control for Cricket in India deciding the schedule of India A's tour of New Zealand in the middle of the Ranji Trophy season. Former Indian captain and former chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar has strongly criticized this decision of BCCI. Vengsarkar believes that organizing a shadow tour in the wake of Ranji Trophy, the country's biggest first-class tournament, directly reduces the importance of India's domestic cricket.
Under the captaincy of Dhruv Jurel, the India A team has to play three Test matches in New Zealand between 24 October and 7 November before the senior team's Test series. Due to this, most of the top domestic players selected for the tour will be able to participate only in the first round of Ranji Trophy and will be out of a large part of the tournament.
While speaking, Dilip Vengsarkar took a dig at the scheduling and said, 'When the Ranji Trophy season is going on, then what is the need to hold the India A tour? Then what is the point of organizing Ranji Trophy? The idea of organizing such a shadow tour during your own domestic season is shocking, because by doing so you are diluting the importance of your biggest domestic tournament.
He further argued that when the country's star players are playing for India A instead of Ranji Trophy, then the evaluation of the performance of other players scoring runs and taking wickets in Ranji also gets weakened. Vengsarkar said that organizing such tours in the middle of the domestic season is beyond his understanding.
BCCI organizes these shadow tours so that the reserve and queued players can get experience of foreign conditions before senior international tours. However, Vengsarkar has suggested rejecting this argument also. He believes that if the priority is to adapt the players to foreign conditions and local environment, then the senior Test team should be sent first. Vengsarkar said that it makes no sense to send those players on tour who are not even going to be a part of the senior Test series.