On sticky wicket

Ranchi, Nov. 27: If Team India and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are under fire for the pathetic performance in South Africa, back home it is Ranji that is drawing the state scowl.

Former cricketers have trained their guns on the Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA) top brass for the dismal score of the state Ranji team against Himachal Pradesh.

In the plate group match, Jharkhand lost by a huge margin of 342 runs to Himachal Pradesh at Dharamsala.

In the second innings, the team was bowled out for 81 runs. They had scored only 146 in the first innings.

“The Jharkhand Ranji team was bowled out twice for a total of 227 runs in just four hours, and the match was lost. For this, the blame should lie on the state association’s politics,” alleged former cricketers Kuldip Singh, Ujjwal Das and Aditya Verma, in a written statement.

“The officials promise the moon at the time of the elections, but nothing gets translated into reality once the polls are over,” they said, adding that it was strange that the state is not able to find any better coach than V. Venkat Ram.

Last season, Venkat Ram had opted to coach Tripura, but it was reported that it took a lot of convincing from senior JSCA officials to persuade Venkat Ram to accept the mantle of coaching the senior squad for the second year in a row. Ram, a former Bihar Ranji skipper, was not keen as he had committed himself to coach the Tripura Ranji team for the 2005-06 season.

Ram, the only NCA level III coach in Jharkhand, the three veterans said, was back as the Ranji team’s coach because “the person who got him here has about 50 votes and his demand cannot be ignored”.

The players have appealed to the JSCA president to take remedial steps, “because it is shameful that the state, which has produced players like Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Syed Saba Karim, today is in such a pathetic shape. They also suggested JSCA president Amitabh Choudhary to think about what could be done to identify talent.

Amitabh Choudhary was not available for comments.