The Hollowing of the Ranji Beat: IPL Auction Echoes and the Silence of Domestic Cricket

I was sitting in the media gallery of a Mumbai club ground when my phone buzzed on silent. It was a message from a young reporter: 'Sir, it's the first day of the Ranji Trophy. Why is no one building a story?' I looked around. The gallery was empty. The scorecard was updating, but no one's notebook was open. In the 1980s, this same gallery would be packed in February—the first day of Ranji was a pilgrimage, the starting point for discovering the next Virat from school cricket. Today, there is only silence. And this silence is far more dangerous than the noise of the IPL auction, because the auction's din fades in a few months, but the hollowing of the domestic beat lasts for generations.

The greatest irony of Indian cricket is that when the IPL began in 2026, everyone thought Test cricket was in danger. Sixteen years later, Test cricket is alive in India—spectators still fill stadiums, TV ratings hold. What died was the reporter who covered domestic first-class cricket. The person who knew what was special about a Saurashtra spinner's delivery, what politics played out in a Ranji team's dressing room, and which batsman had a technical flaw invisible on TV. The IPL made cricket richer, but it hollowed out the domestic beat.

To understand this hollowing, you have to look beyond auction numbers. In the 2026 mega auction, Mumbai Indians bought Ishan Kishan for Rs 15.25 crore. That figure was on every newspaper headline. But no one wrote about the domestic coach who groomed him, the senior players he shared a dressing room with in the Jharkhand Ranji team, or how Jharkhand's Ranji season went that year. In auction coverage, the player became a product—his price was known, his story was not.

I had the chance to work with Mumbai Indians in 2026. That season I filed 14 training-ground notebooks. The final was in Hyderabad, where Mumbai beat Rising Pune Supergiant by one run. Krunal Pandya's 47 became the locker-room story. But there was another story in that match that no one wrote—a young player from Ranji told me that after the IPL, his domestic coach had said, 'Now you're a star, don't play Ranji.' That sentence was the biggest story of the season, but it never got printed, because we were all so lost in the IPL's glare that we couldn't see the dust of domestic cricket.

In 2026, when the IPL was played in the UAE, I organised a shared notes pool—nine reporters, one bio-bubble, and stadiums without spectators. During that period I wrote 11 pieces on players' routines and the impact of empty stands. But even then I didn't write one thing—the reporters who covered Ranji never returned to the Ranji grounds after Covid. They were moved to the digital desk, where their job was to build stories from tweets. They don't have that notebook with ball-by-ball details of the first day of Ranji.

Here is a fact that shows up in the data but never enters the debate. According to a 2026 report by the BCCI's domestic cricket committee, media coverage of Ranji Trophy matches has been steadily declining since 2026. By one estimate, around 400 media credentials were issued in a Ranji season in 2026; by 2026, that number had fallen below 120. This decline is not just a number—it is the disappearance of the eyes that once identified domestic talent in time.

You might think the digital age has democratised reporting. Anyone can build a story from a Twitter thread; any fan can make a viral video clip of an unknown Ranji player. But this democracy is superficial. The information that a credentialed reporter once got—how a batsman changed his grip in a practice session, which fast bowler altered his action, which coach called which player 'mentally weak'—no one has that information today. Because that information comes from sitting in the gallery, not from watching a screen.

In my 46-year career, I have seen three generations.

The first generation—Ranji reporters of the 1980s and 90s—travelled by train, sat at the ground for four days, and wrote 2026-word match reports. They had time, so their eyes had depth. They saw Sachin Tendulkar in Ranji for the first time when no one knew him. They saw Rahul Dravid's first-class debut for Karnataka. They knew which player came into the team on whose recommendation.

The second generation—of the 2000s—were reporters when the IPL arrived. They watched media focus shift from domestic cricket to the IPL. They also covered Ranji, but their editors told them, 'Ranji stories don't bring traffic; build the IPL budget.' They stopped writing about dressing-room politics because franchises wouldn't let it leak.

The third generation—post-2026—has social media access instead of media credentials. They check Ranji scorecards but don't go to the ground. For them, Ranji is a 'database' from which names emerge for the IPL auction. They don't know what a Ranji dressing room looks like—where the captain and coach argue over a pot of tea, where a senior player tells a junior, 'Don't play too many shots.'

Now the question arises: did the IPL kill Ranji? The direct answer is no. The IPL didn't kill Ranji cricket; it killed the Ranji beat. That is, the journalism that told stories from inside domestic cricket. And that is the paradox—at the very moment Indian cricket produced the most talent, the eyes that understood that talent dwindled.

There are three reasons for this paradox that usually go unseen.

First—Ranji's media model never worked economically. The BCCI doesn't earn from Ranji ticket sales, so it never subsidised media coverage. In the IPL, every franchise has an interest in its players being talked about, so they provide facilities to the media. Nothing like that exists in Ranji. Go to cover a Ranji match in Delhi and sometimes you can't even get a copy of the scorecard.

Second—the IPL redefined cricketer stardom. Earlier, a Ranji player's dream was to play for India. Today, a Ranji player's dream is to become a crorepati in the IPL. That's not bad, but it has made Ranji a 'ladder'—if you leapfrog it to reach the IPL, who cares about Ranji. This affected domestic storytelling—no young reporter wants to build a career in Ranji because you get a byline there, not an identity.

Third—technology made coverage 'data-friendly'. Hawk-Eye, speed guns, wagon wheels—these are in franchise cricket. In Ranji, scores are still written by hand in places. What will a young reporter addicted to data-driven stories do with a Ranji story that has no numbers, but the voice of a coach telling his player, 'You're not bowling, you're pretending to bowl'? Writing that voice requires a different kind of journalism, one that isn't rewarded on today's digital beat.

I'm not saying the IPL is bad. I watched 16 matches with Mumbai Indians in 2026, and I cherish that experience. The IPL gave me what Ranji couldn't—writing a 700-word story in two hours, connecting with a fan community, and finding my place in the digital world. But I also know that in 2026, while I was at the final in Hyderabad, a former BCCI selector was sitting at a Ranji ground in Madhya Pradesh, watching a young fast bowler he had seen that season who later sold for Rs 10 crore in the IPL. He told no one how sluggish that boy had been earlier. That story never got printed.

Its biggest danger will show in the coming years. When no one writes Ranji stories, selectors will have less information about a player who excels in red-ball cricket. Today, in the IPL's dazzle, we are losing players who are not T20 heroes but can bat 300 balls in a Test. The hollowing of the Ranji beat is not just a journalism crisis; it is also a crisis of depth in Indian Test batting. When no reporter can tell which Ranji batsman has a footwork problem, the selection committee will be left with the same video analysis the IPL has—and IPL video shows less footwork, more swing.

Another thing we are all forgetting—the sound of the ground. A Ranji match has no DJ, no cheerleaders. But there is a sound—the groundstaff dragging the roller, the coach's whistle, and the silence in which you can hear how nervous a teenage batsman is on debut. That sound is not captured in any reporter's mic today. And when the sound isn't captured, how will that season be recorded in history? Only in numbers? Who will remember that a spinner took 25 wickets in five matches that season, but his story was never written?

I often wonder—are we doing what newspapers did in the 1980s? Back then, Test coverage was being cut and ODIs were getting more space. Some old reporters said, 'Test cricket will die.' It didn't. But the tradition of Test reporting weakened. Today we are doing the same—killing the Ranji beat in IPL coverage. This mistake is not just the media's; it is a shared mistake of the board, the franchises, and the audience.

Now the question is not how to save the Ranji beat—that debate was lost long ago. The real question is how we will write Ranji stories in the next five years when no full-time reporter is at the ground. Will the BCCI create a fund for Ranji coverage in its media rights deal, as it does for the IPL? Will franchises be interested in commissioning stories of their players' roots, or do they only want trophy photos? And most importantly—will we readers, who debate every IPL auction, look at the first day's Ranji scorecard with the same seriousness?

That day I walked out of the empty gallery. The phone buzzed again. This time it was a message from a franchise media manager—'Sir, coming to tomorrow's training session? Krunal has an interview window.' I said yes. But in my mind was that young reporter who had asked for the first-day Ranji story. I replied: 'You write it. The gallery is empty, but there are 22 players on the field. One of them has the story that will be worth Rs 10 crore at tomorrow's IPL auction. You write that story first; the price will come later.' And that is the future of the Ranji beat—perhaps not a full-time reporter, but that young journalist who can sit alone in an empty gallery and still hear what the ground is saying.