Four groups, 37 teams, 160 matches, and a mind-boggling 647 scheduled match-days. That is what the Ranji Trophy 2018-19 season will comprise, the biggest ever in the tournament's 84 years, with more teams, and consequently more matches, venues and playing days. Every Ranji season comes with its own set of challenges and aspirations for players, this one will have it magnified given its unprecedented scale. Here's a look at what the key talking points from this season are likely to be.
India, India A and the Ranji Trophy
With the Indian team touring Australia soon, and India A going to New Zealand, the cream of the crop will be missing. The Indian team has always been occupied with international assignments during the season, but with India A too off, it will affect some teams starkly. Mumbai, for example, will lose Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer and Prithvi Shaw, apart from Shardul Thakur's injury. Karnataka will be similarly hit with all of Karun Nair, Manish Pandey, Mayank Agarwal, K Gowtham and R Samarth absent for large parts.
While Mumbai and Karnataka might still get by - they have learned to live without these players at varying times in the past few years - how much will Parthiv Patel's absence affect Gujarat? Will Vidarbha's title defence hold up without Rajneesh Gurbani - and of course no Umesh Yadav either? Shubman Gill and Anmolpreet Singh were Punjab's vanguard of young talented batsmen, but they won't be around either. And will Delhi be just as much of a force without Navdeep Saini, their best bowler last season? Andhra, too, will find it tough with Hanuma Vihari and KS Bharat missing, as will Jharkhand without Ishan Kishan and Shahbaz Nadeem.
Batsmen waiting to break through
One aspect of this Ranji season is that the rewards, in terms of higher honours, cannot be immediate. The Indian squad for the Tests in Australia has already been picked, and India aren't playing any more Tests till the end of next year's World Cup. The earliest likely Test cricket will then be in August 2019, barring a possible one-off Test against Zimbabwe at home in February or March. However, what a blockbuster season in the Ranji Trophy can do is get people to notice you. Not just selectors, but those in the Indian team too. If the Australia series leads to more batting failures, then those on the fringes will fancy call-ups for the next series. Nair, in particular, will have plenty to prove as will Mayank, but so will other hopefuls like Gill, Anmolpreet and Ankit Bawne.
Spin stocks
R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav are established as India's first-choice spinners for the longer format. What of the next rung though? There are several contenders, without one name standing head and shoulders above the rest. Jharkhand's Nadeem has been a domestic giant, without getting international recognition yet. Jayant Yadav is still a contracted player, but spent half of last year injured. His comeback, though, has been quietly effective, with several key performances for Haryana in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. He did play for India A too, in the lead-up to the domestic season, but was omitted from the A squad for New Zealand. Then there's Jalaj Saxena, who has been a domestic star brighter than any other perhaps whether he was playing for Madhya Pradesh or as a professional for Kerala now, but still doesn't always make it to the A squads.
Yuzvendra Chahal isn't going to be available when India play white-ball cricket, but if the selectors want to widen their search for a legspinner, there is Madhya Pradesh's Mihir Hirwani. Legspin is of course in his genes, but he has been taking the wickets to justify that too. Among the younger crop, the left-arm spin duo of Siddharth Desai (Gujarat) and Anukul Roy (Jharkhand) have shown much promise, at both Under-19 and senior levels.
Qualification to knockouts
The process to qualify for the knockouts will remain the same as it was for the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Groups A and B will form a kind of supergroup, and the top five teams from there will qualify for the quarter-finals. This means that it is possible, for example, that all five teams that qualify are from only one of those groups. The only division of the supergroup will be that the nine teams in each of Group A and B will be only amongst themselves. But it will not be enough for a team to be close to the top in their own group, they will have to keep watch on what's happening in the other group as well.
Joining these five will be the top two from the 10-team Group C, and finally, the team that finishes on top in the Plate Group, that comprises the nine newcomers. The seedings, so to speak, for the quarter-finals will have the five teams from A and B as one to five, followed by the Group C teams in order, and then the Plate Group topper.
For next season, two teams that finish at the bottom for the A and B group will be relegated to Group C, with the Group C winners earning a promotion. The team that finishes bottom in Group C will go down to the Plate Group, while the Plate Group winner will earn a promotion to Group C.
The newcomers
How will the new teams from the north-east fare? This was asked as soon as it was finally apparent that the new teams would be taking part, and after a month of one-day cricket in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the questions haven't disappeared. Bihar, Uttarakhand and Puducherry finished in the top three, and form, experience and quality point to that happening again. But while there may be the occasional mis-match, and the Plate Group topper might face the prospect of heavy defeat in the quarter-final too, the move to have nine new teams in India's premier domestic competitions is one whose inclusiveness should be lauded. Sure, some matches will have lopsided results, but in the long run, cricket in the country will benefit.