Ranji Trophy brings India stars down to earth: Here's how Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant and more performed

Failure en masse with Jadeja lone exception: Domestic cricket brings India stars down to earth. (PTI Photo)

Ranji Trophy: As it turned out, it was much ado about nothing. The India stars returning to domestic cricket, thanks to the BCCI's strict parenting after the disaster Down Under, accounted for lots of column inches. It was as if they were doing a favour to the game. But domestic cricket doesn't allow tokenism, as stalwarts like Wasim Jaffer and Cheteshwar Pujara would attest.

Rohit Sharma was struggling to buy a run in Australia before standing himself down in the final Test. A tally of 31 runs in five innings made his position in the team untenable. And if people thought it would be easy for him to get back among runs via the domestic cricket route, they were in for a rude awakening. Rohit’s Ranji Trophy return was a short-lived one - three off 19 balls against Jammu and Kashmir.

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Fast bowler Umar Nazir gave him a working over before dismissing him. Rohit's favourite pick-up shot didn't work and he got a leading edge to mid-off.

Rohit's 2024-25 Test average was 10.93. Red-ball cricket seems to have passed him by, for there's apparently no cure for slowing reflexes at the age of 37. A standing India captain - assuming that he is still India’s Test captain - playing a Ranji Trophy game rarely happens.

Before this, Rohit's last appearance in this tournament was in November 2015. The question is, why didn't he turn up for the Duleep Trophy, which was the start of the domestic red-ball season? What's the point in playing a Ranji Trophy match when the red-ball season is over and the focus is on the Champions Trophy?

Yashasvi Jaiswal, too, returned to the Mumbai fold but was dismissed for four. He was trapped leg-before by Auqib Nabi. The left-hand batter was done in by a break-back that beat the inside edge.

Mumbai were all out for 120 in their first innings. Shardul Thakur’s 51 off 57 balls gave the total some respectability.

Elsewhere, in Rajkot, Rishabh Pant perished for one, playing for Delhi against Saurashtra. His team were all out for 188 in 49.4 overs. On a turning pitch, Saurashtra’s spinners shared nine wickets between them. That Ravindra Jadeja returned with 5/66 from 17.4 overs didn't offer much surprise. Despite his tenuous playing time with the Saurashtra team, Jadeja is actually a domestic cricket thoroughbred. He is in the autumn of his international career, but on turners, the left-arm spinner still can be pretty deadly.

In Bangalore, Punjab folded up for 55 in their first innings, with Shubman Gill making four. Vasuki Koushik, Abhilash Shetty and Prasidh Krishna, the three Karnataka seamers, ran through the opposition batting.

Gill has all the talent in the world and he is considered to the future of India's batting across formats. But his apparently “happy flower” (to borrow from Pep Guardiola) approach reminds one of a David Gower quote: "It's of no use having your Bentley Continental parked without fuel."

The fanfare around domestic cricket will increase manifold, with Virat Kohli expected to play for Delhi in the next round of Ranji Trophy fixtures, from January 31. But the big guns returning to the domestic fold will serve very little purpose unless it becomes a routine. For the moment, the hard grind of domestic cricket has brought the stars down to earth.