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Irani Trophy -
The Curtain Raiser of the Indian first class
season |
Sep
29, 2005
After a series of significant All India
Tournaments such as the MRF Trophy, Buchi Babu,
Moin-ud-dowlah, J.PAtre and others, it’s time
for the official start of the Indian first class
Season. And as always since 1965-66, the Indian
Domestic Season begins with the traditional
4-days Zal Irani Trophy. This Trophy match is
followed by the Challenger Series – a triangular
One Day Tournament which has India Seniors,
India A and India B. These tournaments serve the
purpose of rebuilding Team India and also to
have a scrutiny of how the fringe players are
coming up.
The Zal Irani Cup is a 4 days first class match
between the National Champions or the Ranji
Trophy Champions in the Elite Group and Rest of
India. One might wonder about how the name Zal
Irani has come to this Trophy. Well for
starters, Zal Irani was the Board of Control for
Cricket in India’s 1st Hon. Treasurer and has
been in that post since 1928 till his demise in
1970. Mr. Irani was also the BCCI President from
1966 to 1969. Just for 1 year in this long
period, he wasn’t the Hon. Treasurer and that
was because he happened to be the Board’s
Vice-President in that particular year. For such
a long serving official it was only apt for the
BCCI to associate his name with this Trophy
match.
This prestigious Trophy match dates back to the
1959-60 season played between the then Ranji
Champs Bombay led by Polly Umrigar and Rest of
India led by Lala Amarnath. This match was
played in Delhi and was a drawn encounter and
the Trophy was taken by Bombay on virtue of its
1st innings lead. For two consecutive seasons,
the BCCI somehow couldn’t have this match and it
reshaped again from 1962-63 (1964-65, the trophy
match was postponed to the start of the next
season) and today in the 2005-06 season we have
Rest of India taking on the new champions
Railways at the Karnail Singh Stadium, Delhi.
This year, it’s going to be the 43rd Irani
Trophy Match and Railways are playing for this
Trophy for the 2nd time. The only time they had
played in the Irani Trophy they were successful
and it was in the 2002-03 season. Railways then
led by wicket keeper Abhay Sharma defeated the
Yuvraj Singh led Rest of India by 5 wickets. All
in all, Rest of India has won this Trophy 18
times and next is Bombay/Mumbai which has won 15
times. Karnataka has won 4 times,
Delhi twice
and Hyderabad,
Tamil Nadu and Haryana have won
once each. The last Irani Trophy game saw a
young Rest of India beat Mumbai which missed
Sachin Tendulkar’s services by a huge margin of
290 runs.
For all those records crazy people, Gundappa
Vishwanath is at the top when it comes to the
most runs scored in the Irani Trophy. Vishy had
scored a run more than 1000 in the 15 innings he
had played in 9 matches @ 77.00 avg for both
Karnataka and Rest of India. Left arm spinner
Padmakar Shivalkar picked 51 wickets playing for
Bombay and Rest of India in different seasons.
The highest individual score to date has been
246 scored by Praveen Amre for Rest against
Bengal in 1990-91 season and the best figures
are held by Anil Kumble – 13/138 for Rest
against Delhi in 1992/93.
Murali Kartik playing
for Rest against Mumbai in 2000-01 and Ravi
Shastri playing for Mumbai against Rest in
1981-82 are the two bowlers who have taken 9
wickets in an innings and both are slow left arm
spinners and if you could add up another left
arm spinner Padmakar Shivalkar, who has taken
the most number of wickets in this Trophy!
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