As a schoolboy, when I visited grandparents in Kerala, there was a running joke provoked by my love for cricket. Relatives would tell me with much merriment that cricket was a game played by royalty and madmen — “usually the same people,” they added — and berate me for not playing football or volleyball.
Most relatives were converted in the 1980s, when television brought cricket into their homes. Like the mathematician G.H. Hardy who said that even if he lay dying he would still want to hear the cricket scores, my grandmother expressed just such a wish. That was startling. She had become a fan of Ravi Shastri, which was as dramatic a turnaround as you could imagine.
Perhaps television played the key role in spreading the game in one of India’s few regions where traditionally cricket was looked down upon.
But long before that, Kerala’s contribution to cricket had been well established. A Kerala player and later secretary of the association, K.V. Kelappan Thampuran, had invented the 50-over game in 1951. This was the Pooja All-India tournament, a decade before the Midlands Knockout Cup was played in England and 12 years before the Gillette Cup there.
Practical reason
Kelappan is seldom given credit for his innovation even in India. He invented the popular format — which led to the World Cup and the current Champions Trophy — for a very practical reason. He wanted to run an all-India tournament in Tripunithra, a small town in Kochi, but there was not much time for the existing formats (three-day and two-day). It also meant “long breaks from family and work,” in the words of Vishnu Kumar who has written about the tournament’s origins.
Today, as Kerala plays the final of the Ranji Trophy for the first time ever, it is easy to forget how low down the pecking order their cricket had once been. Kerala were the whipping boys of the South Zone. Occasionally when they came close to upsetting rivals, the fact that they didn’t know how to handle the situation allowed the opposition to regroup. Nothing succeeds like failure.
It meant that players from the region were never in the national reckoning no matter what they did although any success would have been, by definition, against superior teams. Among their best-known batters was Balan Pandit, whose 262 not out against Andhra was the highest individual score till Sreekumar Nair made an unbeaten 306 against Services in 2017.
In the mid-80s, skipper K. Jayaram scored four centuries in five Ranji matches, but didn’t get to play in the Duleep Trophy.
Before the fast bowlers Tinu Yohanan and S. Sreesanth played for India, Kerala fans had to be content with those who had a parental connection with the State, like Ajay Jadeja or Robin Uthappa (whose mothers were from Kerala). Or Sunil Valson and K.P. Bhaskar who were born elsewhere. Currently the talented Sanju Samson is in and out of India’s white ball teams.
“This is Kerala’s 1983 moment,” leg spinner Ananthapadmanabhan said after Kerala’s entry into the final. It was under his captaincy that Kerala first qualified for the knockout thirty years ago.
National call-up?
Will the successes of the two finalists lead to a national call-up for some leading performers? Vidarbha’s Yash Rathod, 24, has made 933 runs this season with five centuries. Akshay Wadkar, 30, is in the Top Ten with 674 runs. Among Kerala’s batters, Salman Nizar, 27, has 607 runs, and Mohammed Azharuddeen, 30, has 601.
Vidarbha’s left arm spinner Harsh Dube,22, heads the wicket-taking list with 66 while Kerala veteran Jalaj Saxena is their leading bowler with 38.
I bring up the statistics merely to point out that for long India’s international cricket has run on parallel lines with the domestic, not meeting at all till the cricket board’s recent order that all internationals turn out in the Ranji Trophy. This, following a disastrous tour of Australia. How many of the finalists will find themselves in the national reckoning at a time when performances in the IPL seem to carry more weight will be watched with interest.
It is a sobering thought that India’s most successful Test batter, Sachin Tendulkar, never played their most successful bowler Anil Kumble in the Ranji Trophy. Make of that what you will.
Published – February 26, 2025 12:27 am IST