Thumbs down to neutral venues in Ranji Trophy

New Delhi, January 17

BCCI's move to conduct the Ranji Trophy matches at neutral venues has failed miserably in its first attempt, according to the leading domestic players. They say the idea did not work due to the apathy of the host associations and poor planning.

The concept was introduced to make the tournament more competitive by negating the home advantage to the teams and exposing the players to different conditions.

“The idea was good but the implementation was poor. Most of the host associations did not show any interest in organising matches for other teams. The facilities were poor, be it providing good wickets, adequate balls or serving decent food. It could have been handled much better,” Rajat Bhatia, a Delhi-based cricketer, said.

“For example take our match against Assam in Vizag. The wicket was not fit for a first-class match and the match was over in three days. It was just two weeks before an international match was to be held at the venue,” the 37-year-old added.

Another issue for the players was the scheduling of the games. They had to travel to remote areas of the country with limited time in hand. “Sometimes there was just a three-day gap between games and we had to travel to places which were not easily accessible. We had to spend a lot of time on the road,” said Gujarat all-rounder Axar Patel. — PTI