Ranchi, despite being the hometown of India’s last World Cup-winning captain, was nowhere close to being in contention to host the World Cup. So were Dehradun and Jaipur. Mohali was unfairly dumped as a World Cup venue.
Despite the World Cup fever having gripped India — albeit not reflecting in the stands as much as it should have — all these centres, and Mumbai beyond the Wankhede Stadium, will attract attention over the next three weeks.
The inter-state men’s domestic season will commence with the league stage of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on October 16. Despite the clash with the showpiece event, the SMAT — as it is referred to in the hashtag-dominated parallel universe — will definitely not go unnoticed. After all, the tournament, over the last decade, has resulted in a hunting ground for dozens of Indian Premier League franchises’ talent scouts and is also closely followed by the new-age loyal T20 supporters in India.
Add to that the fact that the tournament will also mark the bugle for India’s build-up for the 2024 T20 World Cup and the importance of the tournament increases manifold, beyond the testing ground for the IPL Auction.
Mumbai won their first title in last year’s edition of this tournament. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
No wonder then that the national selection committee, chaired by Ajit Agarkar, will divide their duties and will mostly be at the SMAT venues rather than watching the Men in Blue in action.
Considering the BCCI having moved on from Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli for T20Is even before Agarkar took over as chief selector, it will be a critical phase for his selection panel to zero down on the talent pool to create a successful combination for Hardik’s Hurricanes in the West Indies and the USA next June. As a result, all the promising stars on India’s T20I anvil — including the Asian Games gold medallist squad — will be in action to make a bid for a place in India’s squad.
In fact, a look at the 38 teams tells you that many state associations seem to have taken a cue from the national selection panel’s policy to ride on the raw power of youth when it comes to T20 cricket. Washington Sundar (Tamil Nadu), Yash Dhull (Delhi) and Tilak Varma (Hyderabad) have been appointed captain by their respective sides.
Whether the young captains will lead from the front and manage to gel their respective units together will be interesting to see.
Not all the teams have adopted the youngster mantra, though. Besides leading Kerala, Sanju Samson will get yet another opportunity to showcase to the national selectors that he still has it in him when it comes to wearing India’s blues consistently.
Karnataka has reposed its faith in Mayank Agarwal, so has Mumbai when it comes to Ajinkya Rahane. Interestingly, Maharashtra has gone a step further.
Mayank Agarwal, captain of Karnataka. | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT
Not only have Kedar Jadhav and Ankeet Bawane been recalled to the T20 side but Jadhav has also been appointed as the captain of the team. It will mean that Ruturaj Gaikwad — India’s gold medallist at the Asian Games — will not lead his side this time around.
Gaikwad’s Asian Games teammate and Maharashtra senior, Rahul Tripathi, has switched allegiance to Goa after being omitted from the Ranji Trophy probables’ list. Tripathi is not the only big-ticket transfer.
Kuldeep Sen, who has been sidelined by injuries for almost a year, will hope to reinvigorate Tamil Nadu’s pace pack along with T20 specialist T. Natarajan. Sen’s Madhya Pradesh teammate Gourav Yadav will turn out for Pondicherry this time around.
It’s not just the pacers who have decided to play as guest players. The leg-spin duo of Ravi Bishnoi (Gujarat) and Prashant Solanki (Maharashtra) have decided to switch to neighbouring teams from their home teams of Rajasthan and Mumbai, respectively.
Sanju Samson will be the captain of the Kerala team. | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT
Bishnoi’s move may have a hidden objective of deriving indirect advantage by moving to the den of the echelons of India’s cricket administration. Solanki, on the other hand, has decided to move on from Mumbai due to lack of opportunities despite being a regular with Chennai Super Kings set-up.
The tournament will also see the trend of experimentation with rules continue this time around. While the Impact Player rule has been amended to be in sync with that in the IPL, the BCCI has allowed two bouncers to be bowled per over, in a bid to make the game more bowler-friendly.
After trying out the Impact Player rule in the 2022-23 SMAT, it was introduced in IPL 2023, albeit with an amended version. In SMAT, an impact player could be introduced only after the 14th over while IPL modified the introduction of a super-sub at any point in a game.
It will be interesting to see if the two-bouncer experiment will also be adopted in the IPL, come March.
After all, despite its importance for the national set-up, SMAT has primarily emerged as a testing lab not just for the franchises but also for the IPL!
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