Discussions around pay hike, Ranji Trophy format at BCCI's conclave

The domestic team captains and coaches have made it absolutely sure to put forth their request for the reversal of the Ranji Trophy from last year’s neutral venue concept to the tried and tested home-and-away format during the annual conclave of BCCI held at the Wankhede Stadium premises on Tuesday.

The two-hour-long conclave was attended by a majority of the stalwarts in the Board of Control for Cricket India (BCCI), the members of the board and the Supreme Court appointed Committee of Administrators. Veteran off-spinner Harbhajan Singh started the proceedings by making a request to the Indian head coach Anil Kumble to pitch for a revision of the mode of payment to domestic cricketers.

While the veteran skipped the meeting, others like Uttar Pradesh captain Suresh Raina, Gujarat’s Parthiv Patel, Baroda’s Irfan Pathan, Chhattisgarh’s skipper Mohammad Kaif and Karnataka captain R. Vinay Kumar, are understood to have also asked for a revision of match fees.

The domestic cricketers’ match fees are proportionate to the income given by the BCCI, excluding the income from ICC and the IPL. Some of the Ranji team captains also asked to do away with the similarity in match fee of India’s domestic cricketers with that of domestic cricketers in Australia and England.

On the other hand, the BCCI officials are of the belief that unless the state associations start offering seasonal contracts to its cricketers, it would be challenging for domestic cricketers to get an incentive when the ball is rolling about financial security.

Home-Away might just be back in Ranji Trophy:

The suggestion of home-away matches will be now passed on to the technical committee, where former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly serves as its’ head, while he could not attend the meeting on Tuesday.

While CoA member Ramachandra Guha termed the conclave “educative and interesting”. On the other hand, BCCI’s acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary said the captains and coaches had an excellent and open discussion on the diverse topics, with the neutral venue concept being the key focus throughout the conclave.

“There were views supporting both formats. Instead of making a calculation of how many people were on which side, the points made to substantiate a certain position have been collated and will be brought to the working committee and the general body,” said Choudhary.

It would now be interesting to see what the Technical Committee under the guidance of Ganguly would do in order to either please the captains and coaches or to make them grimmer.