Ranji Trophy: Will Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli return to domestic cricket?

It’s not the club versus country debate, but whenever the discussion of Indian cricketers turning out in domestic cricket begins, you can be assured that there’s plenty of context as well as strong opinions on the matter.

In 2024, the BCCI suddenly put an emphasis on selection for the Indian team, across three formats, being based on domestic appearances as well. The thinly veiled message was to Ishan Kishan after the youngster left a tour of South Africa citing the need for a break, and Shreyas Iyer after another injury recurrence among murmurs of a lack of focus on red-ball cricket. 

Some ten months later, the latest example of the argument has gathered steam ahead of the sixth round of the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy – Indian cricket’s premier first-class tournament – starting around the country on January 23. In the aftermath of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy defeat in Australia and ahead of the naming of India’s ODI squad for a short home series with England and then the ICC Champions Trophy, several members of the Indian cricket team have made themselves available for selection. 

A wakeup call after poor Test form? A signal of intent ahead of the Champions Trophy? A gentle nod towards the BCCI diktat regarding domestic appearances? Anyone’s guess, really. 

Shubman Gill is set to play his first Ranji Trophy game for Punjab since 2022, Rishabh Pant has made himself available for what would be his first Ranji appearance in seven seasons, and Yashasvi Jaiswal is free to be picked for Mumbai’s upcoming fixture against Jammu & Kashmir. 

But what has, not unexpectedly, got people talking is Rohit Sharma turning out to practice with Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium this week, and a statement from the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA) secretary that the state association is still waiting to hear back from Virat Kohli. The DDCA named Kohli and Pant as part of their probables for Delhi’s upcoming Ranji Trophy game against Saurashtra, but the secretary Ashok Sharma said that Kohli is yet to confirm his availability and that he feels that the struggling India batsman should, like Pant, return to domestic cricket to find form. 

It has been rare, over the past decade, for top Indian cricketers to go back to domestic cricket. For one, the international calendar is packed and then there is the IPL window. There is no written rule that Team India members must play for their respective state teams, and indeed in the post Tendulkar-Dravid-Ganguly-Laxman era it has become rarer to see top Indian players play the Ranji Trophy. 

It can be argued that India players turning out for their respective domestic teams brings in fans to what is otherwise cricket played out on in front of near-empty stadiums, and that the presence of such names in the dressing room inspires the uncapped pool of cricketers. Equally, it has been argued with logic that India cricketers showing up randomly for a match or two here and there, on an erratic basis, also means that a youngster’s spot is taken. 

Kohli last played a Ranji Trophy match in 2012, when an estimated crowd of 10,000 packed the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Ghaziabad to watch Uttar Pradesh host Delhi. That match was indeed a star-studded fixture, boasting Team India players such as Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Ishant Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Suresh Raina, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Praveen Kumar, apart from Mohammad Kaif who had by then long been out of national reckoning. 

Rohit has not played a Ranji Trophy game for Mumbai since the 2015-16 season, and his last domestic first-class match came during the 2017 Duleep Trophy. India’s Test and ODI captain averaged 6.20 in Australia and dropped himself for the final Test in Sydney, while Kohli fell eight times out of eight in the BGT to shots outside off stump. 

Will one Ranji Trophy match turn Rohit into a top Test player? Will playing against Saurashtra eradicate Kohli’s repeated indiscretions outside off stump? Not at all. India next play Test cricket in late June when a new World Test Championship cycle starts, and barring round six of the ongoing Ranji Trophy, Rohit and Kohli have nothing but white-ball cricket until the tour of England in six months. 

One Ranji Trophy match, three ODIs against England, the Champions Trophy and the IPL are all that Rohit and Kohli have to get themselves into red-ball form ahead of five Test matches in England. 

Views are, as expected, divided on the current hot topic. Many media pundits and countless cricket fans have called for Team India players to return to domestic cricket when out of form, while lamenting the long absence of Rohit and Kohli from the Ranji Trophy. It is, in fact, the go-to refrain for many every season. To counter that, there is the argument of how one or two domestic matches will impact players who, from the outset, don’t seem to value domestic cricket. 

There is no straightforward answer, but irrespective of which side of the debate you’re on, getting big names back into the very domestic system from where they came must be encouraged.