Why Virat Kohli’s Ranji return is a quietly seismic moment for Indian cricket

Sachin Tendulkar was an active Test cricketer when Kohli played his previous Ranji Trophy match, back in November 2012. Mind you, that was a one-off. His last appearance before that was in December 2010. For perspective, MS Dhoni was yet to hit Nuwan Kulasekara for that six, while Vaibhav Suryavanshi – Rajasthan Royals’ acquisition for the 2025 IPL – was not born.

Naturally, Kohli’s return to India’s premier domestic first-class competition led to last-minute across-sector adjustments. His practice session attracted fans. The official broadcasters were initially not supposed to live-stream the match, but they changed their plans. And so on.

Why is Kohli even playing in the Ranji Trophy?

In early 2024, the BCCI had insisted on contracted cricketers being available for domestic cricket. The Indian season opened with the Duleep Trophy – a quadrangular tournament featuring India’s best first-class cricketers.

While some Test cricketers played, Kohli was not part of the competition and neither was Test captain Rohit Sharma. “We should not insist on players like Rohit and Virat to play in the Duleep Trophy,” explained Jay Shah, BCCI secretary at that point. “They will risk injury. If you have noticed, in Australia and England, every international player does not play domestic cricket. We have to treat the players with respect.”

Fair enough. Rohit was 37 at that point and Kohli almost 36. While both had retired from T20Is after India’s long-awaited T20 World Cup triumph in June, they were still active in Tests, ODIs, and the IPL. The schedule was still hectic.

Kohli had opted out of the England series earlier that year, but had been India’s best batter on the tour of South Africa just before that. He was looking good. India were winning. So why bother?

The problem began after that. Bangladesh did not pose much of a challenge, but New Zealand caught India off guard to sweep the series 3-0, ending so many streaks that they are best left for another piece. Kohli failed, and so did Rohit.

The raised eyebrows soon reverted to normal. India began the Australia tour with a remarkable win at Perth. Kohli got a hundred. Things were looking up yet again. New Zealand seemed like a nightmare from which India – and Kohli – had woken up.

It was not to be. In the aftermath of a 1-3 humiliation and India’s first league-stage exit from the WTC, the BCCI announced a list of mandates for the international cricketers or probables. Playing domestic cricket was now “mandatory for players to remain eligible for selection in the national team and for central contracts”.

After a neck injury kept him out of the Saurashtra match, Kohli is set to return against Railways at Delhi.

Why the fuss? Cricketers do play domestic cricket…

… but not Indian cricketers after they reach a point in their careers. Not anymore.

They used to, when cricket was restricted to one format. Huge crowds were common at the Ranji Trophy, which was one place where the fans could see their heroes play even if they could not get tickets to the Test matches (which were restricted to a handful of cities anyway).

That changed when limited-overs cricket arrived, and became almost unrecognisable as the IPL came with several significant changes.

To begin with, the Indian cricket calendar was instantly slashed to ten months. What was more, the geopolitical hierarchy of selection policy in Indian cricket – club to state to zone to Rest of India – was no longer the only route to an India cap, at least in limited-overs cricket. The stars who were picked in bilateral international series were not expected to play domestic cricket.

The last point is not a shade on the cricketers. Between January 1, 2015 and January 29, 2025, India have played 485 international matches – 54 more than England, the next on the list. Assigning five days to a Test match (and one to ODIs and T20Is), that is 897 days.

In other words, three months of high-intensity work at the highest level in a year that has already been reduced to ten months. This is without the travel, practice, time to recover – everything. It is only fair that the cricketers, especially the across-format stars, skip some of these.

A popular narrative expects Indian cricketers to forego IPL stints to play domestic cricket. This is both unfair (why would anyone choose playing cricket for less money over playing cricket for more money?) and illogical (unlike most other leagues, the IPL is not played in the Indian domestic season).

A comparison of three Indian batting giants across eras will perhaps make this clear. India never took ODIs seriously until late into Sunil Gavaskar’s career. Tendulkar dominated two formats and adapted to a third, while T20 came to Kohli not too long after his debut.

First-class matches until January 29, 2025

Note:
Domestic matches include only games for state, zone, and Rest of India.

As mentioned, the Kohli era is virtually unrecognisable from the Gavaskar era in this aspect. Tendulkar’s Test:domestic ratio, while lower than Kohli’s, may not seem significantly lower at first glance. However, of Kohli’s 28 domestic matches, 27 had come before he had made his Test debut. For Tendulkar – who debuted at 16 – that count reads only eight out of 53.

The debut age makes Tendulkar an outlier. Perhaps it makes more sense to look at Rahul Dravid, who debuted at 23 and had a ratio of 2.216 (164 Tests, 74 domestic matches).

A fairer comparison, thus, would be to pit Kohli against his peers around the world – including the other three from the Fab Four Martin Crowe had predicted a decade ago.

First-class matches until January 29, 2025

Note:
Domestic matches include only games for the respective teams in a cricketer’s home country.

The split is evident. Karunaratne, Bavuma, and Brathwaite – the cricketers with the lowest Test:domestic ratios – are Test mainstays of their respective Test sides. All three have led for significant periods (Bavuma and Brathwaite still do).

However, they are not sought-after T20 cricketers. Bavuma has had his share of games – he has even led South Africa – but not anymore. All of Karunaratne’s 34 T20 matches came before the end of 2018 and none have been for Sri Lanka. And Brathwaite, yet to get his T20 cap, remains an oddity. Since their calendar is more or less open, they play as much domestic cricket as they can.

Not Williamson or Babar, both of whose numbers are similar to Kohli’s. Babar’s lack of appearance in domestic cricket is well-known, but it may come as a revelation that Williamson has played only one Plunket Shield match since October 2019, and only four more since 2012-13.

Smith and Root – the others from the Big Three – play a lot more domestic cricket. Root played five County Championship matches as recently as in 2024 while also featuring in six Tests in the same summer. Smith’s appearances, while more sporadic of late (only two since the pandemic), used to be more frequent in the 2010s.

However, Root was never a franchise T20 regular; nor does he play for England in the format. Smith used to be regulars in both at one point, but not anymore.

India’s schedule is another major difference between Kohli and the other two. Unlike India, Australia or England do not tour during their home season, which has enabled their cricketers to find windows to play the odd domestic first-class match.

It is perhaps pertinent to compare Kohli with some Test batters who are (or were) regulars in franchise T20 as well as in T20Is. Like other Indians, Kohli does not play overseas T20 leagues, but the IPL – even if we ignore the quality of cricketers – is the longest of them all.

First-class matches until January 29, 2025

Note:
Domestic matches include only games for the respective teams in a cricketer’s home country.

The first noticeable aspect is how small the group of batters with long careers in both Tests and franchise T20 cricket is. Kohli’s ratio is lopsided, but not as much as that of the others on this list. Babar, of course, is part of this list as well.

It makes one wonder whether one needs to calibrate their expectations from regulars across formats. Since their schedules restrict their first-class exposure outside Test cricket to the bare minimum, when are the likes of Kohli and Babar supposed to fine tune their red-ball games?

It is perhaps an indication of cricketers having to choose formats in future even more than they do right now.

So what is the point of Kohli in the Ranji Trophy?

One may brush Kohli’s return to the tournament aside as a token appearance, but there is context to this. To begin with, it will set a template for the next generation of Test regulars to feature in domestic cricket more often.

But there is a perfectly logical cricketing reason too. While combining formats is not ideal, Kohli – after a horror season that fetched him 382 runs at 22.47 including an avalanche of identical dismissals – desperately needs runs under his belt.

There is no reason to believe that Kohli, a bona-fide ODI legend, has lost his touch in that format. However, unless the world conspired to conjure makeshift games, the Ranji Trophy was the only match practice he could have had ahead of the ODIs against England and the Champions Trophy.

And for a batter woefully out of touch, that is important. Even if it is in another format.