With still no official word on a start date of India's premier domestic tournament Ranji Trophy for the second season in a row, Ravi Shastri, former India head coach, took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the matter. Shastri, who is known for never shying away from calling a spade a spade, referred Ranji Trophy as the "bakcbone of Indian cricket" and added that "ignoring" the first-class tournament would be "spineless". "The Ranji Trophy is the backbone of Indian cricket. The moment you start ignoring it our cricket will be SPINELESS!" Shastri who stepped down as India's head coach after the T20 World Cup last year, tweeted on Friday.
The Ranji Trophy, which did not take place in the last season due to Covid-related concerns and restrictions, was postponed indefinitely even this year due to the same reasons. The Ranji Trophy was slated to begin on January 13 this year.
BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal on Thursday, however, said that the board is intendsing to hold the red-ball tournament in "two phases".
"We are exploring the possibility of staging Ranji Trophy, cases were going up when it was postponed, now they seem to be coming down. The operations team is working on whether we can do the league stage next month and complete the rest of the tournament later (post IPL)," Dhumal told PTI after the meeting.
The meeting was also attended by BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah.
As of now, the plan is to hold the league phase for a month, starting in February till March and then have the next phase in June-July, when the monsoon starts in a lot of parts of India with peak summer in some other parts.
"The operations team will work out the logistics and factor in the weather, venue availability as well as availability of players. We are very keen to organise the tournament and that is why we are exploring all possibilities to stage it without compromising players' safety," Dhumal added.
(With PTI Inputs)