After punishing Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan severely, BCCI rubs salt on their wounds with a humungous announcement

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is now aiming to incentivize players who play and take Ranji Trophy, India’s First-class cricket seriously. This new decision from the richest cricket board in the world comes as a measure to preserve the country’s red-ball cricketing system, which is being snubbed by a sect of players who have lucrative IPL contracts in hand.

IPL’s craze and the wealth around it has been blinding our homegrown cricketers who were of the view that the richest T20 league is a doorway towards the Indian national team. Players were rejecting representing their state teams in domestic cricket, especially the Ranji Trophy but once it came to the notice of BCCI, necessary steps were taken.

Strict action was taken at first when BCCI’s honorable secretary warned players about the consequences of not playing the Ranji Trophy and that entry to the Indian team would be made based on domestic performance. Then two centrally contracted players – Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer were excluded from the player retainership list two months ago for snubbing the Ranji Trophy.

And then earlier this month after Rohit Sharma led the Indian team towards a 4-1 Test series win against England, Jay Shah announced the brand new Test scheme. The scheme will be a boost for players who play Test cricket at the highest level consistently and it is also expected to lure the youth to take the format even more seriously.

BCCI figuring out how to reward players who play the Ranji Trophy seriously

As reported by the Indian Express, the BCCI led by Jay Shah is now planning to bring about a new scheme to reward players who feature regularly in the Ranji Trophy circuit. Their main aim is to generate seriousness among players and make the domestic red-ball system much more stronger, legit, and attractive for players to play in.

With the growing importance of IPL and other franchise contracts around the world, red-ball cricket has been falling behind but these new schemes will revive its importance. In the new domestic scheme, BCCI is planning to increase the match fees of the players which will motivate the players a lot.

“After the Test Cricket Incentive Scheme, the BCCI is working out how we can reward players who play red-ball Ranji Trophy cricket. The BCCI is planning to increase the match fees to give more importance to red ball cricket.” – a trusted BCCI source told Indian Express. 

Indian Express reveals number of players who snubbed Ranji Trophy games after landing IPL contracts

In the same report, the Indian Express revealed shocking research about the number of players who snubbed the Ranji Trophy after landing themselves an IPL 2024 contract. According to that report, out of the 165 cricketers who had an IPL contract in hand, 56 of those players did not play a single Ranji Trophy game this season while there were 25 who featured only in one match.

That is an alarming sign for the BCCI but with the new scheme coming up, these numbers are expected to lessen and hopefully, red-ball cricket in the country and around the world will become great again.