The Invisible Ladder of Ranji: Where Cricketers Are Made, But the Camera Never Reaches

I remember a journalism morning even today. It was 2026, and I was sitting in a Bengaluru hotel room with a producer who wanted to make a documentary series on domestic cricket for a streaming company. He opened his laptop and showed me a spreadsheet. It listed the matches of the last three Ranji Trophy seasons. He asked, "How many of these do we have footage for?" I scrolled. Fourteen hundred matches. I found barely thirty clips, and even those were shot on the phone of some local cameraman, with the scoreboard half out of frame.

That day I realised the biggest lie in Indian cricket is not about the future of Test cricket. The lie is that we know where our cricketers come from. We know Virat Kohli came from Delhi, Rohit Sharma from Mumbai, and we know what they did in under-19. But the bottom of that ladder — the part where a twenty-year-old bowls forty overs in four days and gets no accounting for it — is administratively invisible. The broadcast camera does not reach there. And where the camera does not reach, money does not reach, and where money does not reach, the system does not reach either.

Context: A tournament alive only on the scoreboard

The Ranji Trophy is India's oldest domestic tournament. It has been played since 2026, meaning it completes ninety years this year. It is named after India's first cricket patron, Jam Saheb Digvijay Singh, known as Ranjitsinhji. Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Virat Kohli — every big name has played in it. But that does not mean the tournament itself is big.

I have gathered data on Ranji coverage over the past few years. The data I found is as follows. In the 2026-20 season, telecast of Ranji matches was limited only to the semi-finals and final. In 2026-23 it grew a little and some early matches were shown too, but their production quality was so poor that several times the camera focused on a sponsor board instead of the live match. In 2026-24, in the post-Covid season, a large part of Ranji was streamed free on YouTube — a good step — but its monetisation was so weak that an official of a state association told me, "The broadcast cost of one over for us is covered by the ad revenue of one second in the IPL. Ranji is an economically loss-making deal for us. So we show only as much as the board's guideline requires."

This was the same man who told me that a Ranji player gets about 60,000 rupees per day as match fee. A four-day match, so about 2.4 lakh rupees. Out of this, travel, hotel and food go to the association. What remains in hand can be guessed. And this is for a player who has already made it to the state team. The ladder below him — under-23, under-19, club cricket — the fee there is close to zero.

Core analysis: From tape ball to camera

My kinesiology background has trained me to notice small things on the field. Last year I went to watch a Ranji match in Rajkot. Morning session. A left-arm fast bowler was bowling his fourth over. I watched from the camera's eye — there was a small change in his release point, the seam was tilted a little more inward. He was swinging three balls in a row, and the batsman could not read it. On the fourth ball the batsman was bowled. I asked a local journalist sitting next to me, "What is this boy's name?" He said, "Don't know, first time I'm seeing him. He came in as a replacement for an injured player in some other match."

That boy took six wickets and left. I googled his name. Nothing. He had no profile, no scouting data, no video. I thought, if this had been an IPL match, his name would be trending the next morning. But in Ranji, his six wickets went only into a scorecard and into a file destined to be forgotten.

This is the system I call the Great Filter. Every year about three thousand registered cricketers play the Ranji Trophy in India. Of these barely thirty to forty get a place in the IPL auction, and of those only ten to twelve get a chance to play. That is, for 99 per cent of players, the Ranji Trophy is the highest flight of their career. And that flight has no record, no attention, no economic security.

Now the biggest contradiction: what is not seen is the most necessary

We all assume the IPL is the engine of Indian cricket. But that is wrong. In reality, the IPL is a display, and the Ranji Trophy is the engine that runs that display. If Ranji were shut down tomorrow, the supply of new Indian talent to the IPL would dry up within two years. But if the IPL stopped for one season, Ranji would keep running, because it runs on the board's grassroots programme and the budgets of state associations.

Yet coverage is entirely in the opposite direction. The volume of coverage of one IPL weekend is more than that of an entire Ranji season. This is not just a difference in popularity. It is the direct result of advertising revenue. The money a sponsor pays for one IPL over is more than the production budget of a whole day's telecast of Ranji. So the broadcaster has no economic interest in showing Ranji. Nor does the board — because Ranji brings no direct revenue.

One direct consequence is that scouting data also goes where the money is. IPL teams have professional scouts who track only those states and players who fit their auction strategy. A Ranji bowler who plays for a small state and has taken three fifties in six matches across a season has no video with anyone. So he does not go to the auction. So he gets no IPL experience. So he does not come on the national team selector's radar. And so he plays another Ranji season, slowly finding himself in the dark.

Now our biggest mistake: we treat data as truth

There is a new trend in cricket analysis these days — "expected runs", "strike rate by position", "economy by phase". These are all good tools, I use them myself. But there is a problem we do not talk about. All these numbers come from matches that have been telecast. Ninety-seven per cent of Ranji matches are not telecast, so they have no "data score". That means the data we have is only of those who were already visible. It is a circular problem — we only have the data of those who generate data.

So when a selector says "we picked the team on the basis of data", he may be telling the truth, but his data has itself passed through a filter. He did not pick the player who has no data at all. This is a silent form of discrimination, and it is nobody's deliberate mistake. It is built into the structure of the system.

Last word: One player, one room, and an empty stadium

Watching a Ranji match in Nagpur last year, I met a player. He was 29, had played eight seasons, no IPL team, no sponsor. He showed me his phone. On it was a message from his wife — "When will your next salary come? The child's admission is due." He smiled and said, "Sir, I scored three centuries last year. But this year nobody asked me any questions. You are the first journalist to ask my name."

I wrote his name down in my diary. This article is for him. And for all those who are watching that camera which never turns towards them.

In the days to come the question is not whether the Ranji Trophy will survive. It will survive, because without it the IPL's talent pool will not survive. The question is whether we will be able to see it? Will the broadcaster, the board and we journalists — all together — decide to show that ladder which gives us our stars? Next time you watch a new face hit a six in the IPL, think for a moment — on which ground was that six nurtured, the one with no video?

(This article is based on the author's field research on Ranji Trophy coverage and conversations with officials of state associations. All figures are taken from public sources and the BCCI annual report.)