Ranji Trophy - Mumbai's lower-order resilience, a low-scoring tournament and more stats

Mumbai extended their dominance in the Ranji Trophy, clinching their 42nd title, defeating Vidarbha at the Wankhede Stadium. The remaining teams have collectively won 47 Ranji titles, with eight by Karnataka being the second most. Across all the domestic first-class competitions, only New South Wales have won more titles than Mumbai. The Australian domestic team has won the Sheffield Shield on 47 occasions out of 122.

The 2023-24 season triumph was the first for Mumbai in seven seasons, they last won a title in the 2015-16 edition. It is the second-longest span for Mumbai (previously called Bombay) between their two Ranji Trophy titles, having gone eight consecutive seasons without winning one between their title wins in 1984-85 and 1993-94.

The lower-order batters played a role in Mumbai's victory by bailing the team out of trouble in the knockouts. Tanush Kotian and Tushar Deshpande struck hundreds batting at No. 10 and No. 11 in the quarters to rule out any chances of a comeback from Baroda. They added 232 runs in just 40 overs but fell one run short of the highest tenth-wicket partnership in Ranji. The highest is 233 by Ajay Sharma and Maninder Singh against Mumbai, then called Bombay, in 1991-92.

Kotian and Deshpande became only the second No. 10 and No. 11 to score hundreds in the same first-class innings after Chandu Sarwate's 124* and Shute Banerjee's 121 for Indians against Surrey in 1946. Shardul Thakur, batting at No. 9, scored a crucial hundred in the semi-final against Tamil Nadu to help Mumbai gain a lead big enough to secure an innings win. Shardul also made a quick 75 to arrest a middle-order collapse on the opening day of the final.

The No. 9 and lower batters aggregated 861 runs for Mumbai in this tournament, which is the highest for any team in a Ranji edition since 2005-06. Saurashtra's 701 runs in the 2015-16 season were the previous highest. The three hundreds by Mumbai's No. 9 and lower batters are also the most for any team in a first-class series since the 2005-06 season.

The 2023-24 Ranji Trophy was one of the lowest-scoring seasons in the last two decades. The average runs per wicket in the tournament was 27.72 across the 137 matches. Since 2005, this is the second-lowest average for a Ranji edition, behind only the 2019-20 season, where the average was 26.83 across 169 matches. Goa's 618 for 7 against Chandigarh was the highest total of this season, the lowest highest total of a Ranji edition since 2006-07, when no team touched the 600-run mark across 85 matches.

The 2023-24 Ranji Trophy produced some tightly fought games: four matches decided by a margin of fewer than ten runs and one game won by one wicket. Madhya Pradesh edged past Andhra by four runs in the quarter-final, the second-narrowest win in a Ranji knockout match, behind Haryana's two-run win against Bombay in the 1990-91 final.

Services beat Haryana by a mere one run in a low-scoring contest in Lahli, where only 495 runs came at the loss of 40 wickets. It was only the second time a team won by a margin of one run in the Ranji Trophy, with the first by Andhra in the 1974-75 season against Tamil Nadu in Salem.

This Ranji season saw the highest-successful run-chase ever as Railways defeated Tripura by five wickets in pursuit of a 378-run target. They broke the record held by Saurashtra who chased a 372-run target chase against Uttar Pradesh, which came exactly five years ago in a quarter-final match.

Jalaj Saxena's 9 for 68 against Bengal in the group stage were the best bowling figures of this Ranji Trophy season. It was the first time Saxena bagged a nine-wicket haul in his Ranji career but he had five eight-wicket hauls previously in the Ranji Trophy.

No player other than Saxena has more than three eight-plus wicket hauls in Ranji, as Madan Lal, Mahendra Kumar, Raghuram Bhat and Sanju Mudkavi all have three each. Four of Saxena's eight-plus wicket hauls have come at the St Xavier's College Ground in Thumba.

Agni Chopra's first-class carer began with a bang - with five hundreds in his first four games, including two 150-plus scores and a ninety. Agni had at least one century in all those four matches. He became the first player in the history of first-class cricket to score hundreds in each of the first four matches. Australia's Owen Rock, West indies' Joe Solomon and Afghanistan's Darwish Rasooli had hundreds in their first three first class matches.

Solomon had hundreds in each of his first three first class innings, a feat Agni could have matched if not for his dismissal on 92 in the second innings on debut. He finished the season with 939 runs in six matches, the highest for any batter in the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy and the third highest in a debut Ranji season. Jiwanjot Singh aggregated 995 runs in his debut 2012-13 season for Punjab, while G Rahul Singh finished 2016-17 with 945 runs for services.

Deepak Dhapola had moments to cherish in the season with the ball as he took a hat-trick, not once but twice. The first hat-trick for the Uttarakhand quick came against Puducherry in Dehradun and the second against Delhi in Mohali. Both those hat-tricks were in successive matches, but Uttarakhand lost narrowly on both occasions. The wickets taken by Dhapola in both his hat-tricks were either bowled or leg before wicket only.

Dhapola became only the second player to bag multiple hat-tricks in a Ranji season after Joginder Rao. The medium-pacer took three hat-tricks in two matches in the 1963-64 season for the Services team, including two hat-tricks in one match. Rao and Dhapola are the only players with three hat-tricks in the Ranji Trophy - Dhapola took one in 2018-19 against Meghalaya. Anil Kumble, Pritam Gandhe and Vinay Kumar are the other bowlers with multiple hat-tricks in the Ranji Trophy.

Hyderabad reclaimed their place in the Elite League as they made merry in the plate league against some of the teams with lesser experience as they won all seven matches, including the semi-final and final. This included a record triple hundred when they scored at ten runs an over in a 600-plus total. In contrast, Hyderabad failed to win even one of the seven in 2022-23 and lost six on the trot. Even the one draw was due to bad light when they were 36 runs from a defeat.

If Hyderabad win their first match of the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy, they will become only the third team with eight consecutive wins in the history of the tournament, after Mumbai (1961-62 and 1962-63) and Madhya Pradesh (2022 and 2022-23). Hyderabad won six consecutive matches by an innings margin before the plate final against Meghalaya. No other team won more than four successive Ranji matches by an innings margin.

This dominance of Hyderabad also showed the gulf between them and the other teams - they averaged 63.30 with the bat and only 18.29 with the ball. The difference of 45.01 in batting and bowling averages for Hyderabad is the highest for any team in a first-class season since the 2005-06 season. The next on the list is Chandigarh, with 41.26 in the 2019-20 Ranji Trophy, also in the plate group.