Ranji Trophy 2016-17: Tamil Nadu to take on star-studded Karnataka in quarters

Visakhapatnam’s Dr. Y.S.R ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium will be hosting the Southern derby between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy 2016-17 quarter-final. The Vizag pitch has offered some low bounce this season with both spinners and pacers making most of it.

After finishing in the bottom half of Group A in the previous edition, Karnataka regained confidence and ended the group stage at 2nd spot in Group B this season with 5 outright wins in the 8 games. Tamil Nadu on the other hand, steadily came up after an outright loss against Mumbai in the first game. Even though Tamil Nadu picked up 2 outright wins, they managed to take first innings lead in 4 out of 5 drawn games to finish at 3rd spot in Group A.

Karnataka gains the advantage coming into the game as they are powered by coming of internationals stars; Karun Nair, KL Rahul and Manish Pandey. The form of Samarth, Vinay Kumar and Stuart Binny could be handy for Karnataka in their bid to regain the title. Tamil Nadu missed out on the services of Ravi Ashwin and Murali Vijay who were nursing minor injuries.

However, they would be hoping the senior batsmen Abhinav Mukund and Dinesh Karthik would produce some special performance. Probably for the first time, Tamil Nadu’s pace attack has been their strength as the likes of Vignesh, Crist and Natarajan have added the variety to their bowling.

Players to watch out for:

Manish Pandey had a poor outing in the ODI series against New Zealand. With the selection for ODI series against England coming soon, Pandey would be hoping to make a strong case to prove his form and retain his position in the India’s limited-overs squads.

K Vignesh has made phenomenal start to his Ranji Trophy career taking 32 wickets in the 7 games against some top sides at a minimal average of 20.28 and could well turn out to be a threat to the strong Karnataka’s batting.

Playing XI:

With the likes of Rahul, Nair and Pandey coming in, it opens the case for Karnataka to play one of Abbas or Mayank only. Both had a similar range of scores in this season. The team management could even opt for playing with Pavan Deshpande, who scored a fifty and picked two wickets with off spin in the previous game.

Karnataka XI (Probable): Vinay Kumar (C), KL Rahul, R Samarth, Manish Pandey, Karun Nair, Kaunain Abbas / Mayank Agarwal, Stuart Binny, CM Gautam (WK), K Gowtham, S Aravind, Shreyas Gopal.

Tamil Nadu hoped Vijay would end their opening woes which didn’t happen. Now they will need to bring in Jagadeesan for Suryaprakash to open along with Mukund. Vijay Shankar faced fitness issues in their previous game against Gujarat as he was retired hurt twice while batting. In case, of Shankar not been fit, both Jagadeesan could make into the XI as a middle order bat.

Tamil Nadu XI (Probable): Abhinav Mukund, L Suryaprakash / N Jagadeesan, Kaushik Gandhi, Baba Aparajith, Dinesh Karthik (WK), Baba Indrajith, Vijay Shankar, R Aushik Srinivas, A Aswin Crist, K Vignesh, T Natarajan.

Head to Head in Ranji Trophy:

In terms of outright wins, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have 17 each to their name. However, Tamil Nadu have been a clear leader in draw games as they took the advantage of first innings lead on 20 occasions out of the 37 drawn games while Karnataka managed on 11 occasions. 7 games were abandoned or ended without completion of first innings.

This will be the 3rd meeting between the two sides in knockouts with previous two been in finals and on both the times Karnataka emerged as winners.

The upcoming fixture will be their 2nd match in Ranji Trophy on a neutral venue. The first being their previous encounter in the 2014/15 season final.

Last encounter:

The last meeting between both these teams in Ranji Trophy was in the 2014-15 final in March 2015 at the Wankhede Stadium. Captain Vinay Kumar’s five-fer cleaned up Tamil Nadu for just 134 after Karnataka elected to bowl.

Later Karnataka batted Tamil Nadu out with a marathon batting session. Karun Nair’s 328 and KL Rahul’s 188 helped Karnataka after losing early wickets. Vinay struck a century towards the end to frustrate their opposition even more and push their score to 762 before being bowled out.

Despite centuries from Dinesh Karthik and Vijay Shankar in 2nd innings, Tamil Nadu were all out for 411 and lost the game by innings and 217 runs.