Ranji Trophy: Tamil Nadu pushed to the brink after insipid start to season
When the Ranji Trophy schedule for the 2025-26 season was announced, there was optimism in the Tamil Nadu camp. The team had four of its seven league fixtures at home and decided to play all its games at Coimbatore, which had become a fortress in the last two years. Notably, it had the distinct advantage of facing some of the challenging outfits in the group in its backyard.
However, three matches into the campaign, Tamil Nadu’s hopes of qualification are hanging by a thread. Worryingly, in the two home encounters, it lost by an innings to Jharkhand and scraped to a draw against defending champion Vidarbha, garnering a solitary point in the two contests.
A major issue that resurfaced was the batters’ technical incompetence while handling seam bowling. The players have struggled when there has been seam or swing assistance for the medium-pacers. But, this year, the trend of batters getting bowled to seemingly innocuous deliveries on the stump line points to a deeper malaise. Out of its 39 dismissals, frontline batters have been castled 13 times.
Its seamers, too, have looked listless and lacked discipline. Both these problems trace back to the spin-friendly pitches on offer in the TNCA first division league.
“In league matches, the seamers bowl just a few overs on surfaces which are spin-friendly. If you don’t bowl more overs, you can’t get the rhythm of bowling the right lengths and suddenly expect them to do it here,” said head coach Senthilnathan.
“The opponents’ pacers were consistently operating in the channel outside the off-stump or targeting the stumps at the right lengths, which we were not able to do. When Trilok Nag bowled in the right area in one spell, he got three wickets, but couldn’t do it consistently,” he added.
With just four points in its kitty, R. Sai Kishore’s side has almost been pushed into a situation where it has to win the remaining four games to give itself any chance of progressing beyond the group stage.
Published on Nov 05, 2025
