Ranji Trophy 2021-22 Quarter Finals: Each team’s journey to the top eight

The Ranji Trophy 2021-22 quarter finals will be played from June 6 to June 10 across four different grounds in Bangalore.
 By Roshan Gede Jun 4, 2022, 12:56 IST
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Of the eight quarter-finalists, Bengal is the only team to have won each of the three games in their Elite Group.

The 87rd edition of the Ranji Trophy - India’s premier first-class competition - has entered its knockout stages, the whole of which will be played across different venues in Bangalore. The tournament was cancelled in the 2020-21 season due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the first leg of the current edition was conducted successfully between February 17 and March 12.

Bengal, the 2020-21 runners up, won each of their three games in the run to the Quarter-final, where they’ll face Jharkhand, who put up a batting clinic in their pre quarter-final clash against Nagaland in Kolkata. Mumbai, the team with 41 trophy wins, too has made into the top eight, alongside Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh.

Here’s how the Ranji Trophy Quarter Finals are lined up, and each team’s progress to the knockouts:

Quarter Final 1: Bengal vs Jharkhand, Just Cricket Academy Ground, Bangalore

Bengal

Bengal started off their campaign with a 152-run win over Chandigarh in Cuttack, with Abhimanyu Easwaran (114) and bowling all-rounder Sayan Mondal (97*) setting it up for a first-innings total of 437. They romped past Hyderabad by 72 runs and Baroda by four wickets in the subsequent encounters, to top the Elite Group B with 18 points, the most for any team across the eight Elite groups. 

Anustup Majumdar (242 runs), Easwaran (235) and Shahbaz Ahmed (220) have been the team’s most consistent batters, while Mukesh Kumar (15 wickets at 21.60) and Ishan Porel (14 wickets at 19.47) have been the leading bowlers.

There has been a bit of a stir in the setup, with India wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha having sought NOC under controversial circumstances to leave the team ahead of knockouts.


Jharkhand

After an eight-wicket defeat to Chhattisgarh in their Group H opener, Jharkhand bounced back to clinch a narrow 15-run win against Delhi, with the experienced Shahbaz Nadeem getting a five-for in each innings. They secured another thrilling two-wicket win, against Tamil Nadu, with Saurabh Tiwary leading the way with 58 and 93 - the second coming in a tense fourth-innings chase.

They put up a solid 880 in the first innings of the pre-quarter final against Plate Group toppers Nagaland, with Kumar Kushagra (266), Shahbaz Nadeem (177) and Virat Singh (107) scoring hundreds. They progressed through on virtue of a massive first-innings lead  of 463 in a drawn game. With 437 runs at 72.83, Kushagra is eighth among the tournament’s leading run-scorers, while Nadeem (18 wickets) is the seventh among bowlers.

Quarter Final 2: Mumbai vs Uttarakhand, KSCA Cricket Ground (2), Alur

Mumbai

Mumbai, the competition’s most successful team, defeated Odisha by an innings and 108 runs in their first Elite Group D game, and followed it up with a 119 run-win over Goa. They played a thrilling draw against Saurashtra in the last group game, with the defending champions prevailing courtesy of an unbeaten 17.2 over last-wicket partnership after being enforced a follow-on. 

Sarfaraz Ahmed has been the prime batter for Mumbai, registering scores of 165, 63, 48 and 275 respectively in the four innings he played, to occupy the third position among top run-getters. Shams Mulani, the left-arm spinner, has bagged 29 wickets at 15.62, leading the tournament’s wicket-taking charts by a fair margin.

Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand were undone by Andhra’s all-round bowling show in their first game, which they went down by eight wickets. They defeated Rajasthan comprehensively in the second, with left-arm spinner Mayank Mishra returning 7/44 and 4/26 in a 299-run win. They followed it up with a nine-wicket win in another low-scoring game in Thiruvananthapuram, with timely contributions on either fronts.

This is the second time that Uttarakhand has progressed to the top eight in their third year of participation.

Quarter Final 3: Karnataka vs Uttar Pradesh, KSCA Cricket Ground, Alur

Karnataka

Unsurprisingly, the star-studded Karnataka line-up has thrown up numerous brilliant individual performances, largely on the batting front to help them top the Elite Group C with 16 points. Devdutt Padikkal (178) and skipper Manish Pandey (107*) set it with the bat against Puducherry, before Krishnappa Gowtham and Shreyas Gopal bagged five-fors in the first and second innings respectively in an innings and 20 runs win.

Karun Nair starred in the next game against Jammu and Kashmir with 175 in the first innings, as did Prasidh Krishna, returning 6/35 and 4/59 in a 117-run win. They played out a draw against Railways in the third, with Pandey (156) and Krishnamurthy Siddharth (146) extending their golden patch.

Uttar Pradesh

The eight-time champions will be up against a well-rounded Uttar Pradesh side, which has in-form Rinku Singh and Yash Dayal in their ranks - two of IPL 2022’s breakout stars. UP defeated Maharashtra and Assam by six wickets each in the Elite Group G, before salvaging a draw against Vidarbha after conceding a 247-run first-innings lead, which helped them edge the two-time winners by a point.

Rinku Singh and Priyam Garg have already breached the 300-run mark for the season, with the former having scored fifties in four of his six innings. Ankit Rajpoot has been the strike bowler with 12 wickets at 27.66.

Quarter Final 4: Punjab vs Madhya Pradesh, KSCA Ground (3), Alur

Punjab

Punjab, a side featuring young IPL stars in skipper Abhishek Sharma and Ramandeep Singh, to go with seasoned campaigners in Mandeep Singh, Gurkeerat Singh, Siddhart Kaul and Mayank Markande among others,  will be one of the teams to look out for in the knockouts. Mandeep carried the team’s batting with hundreds in each of their two wins against Tripura (by six wickets) and Haryana (by 10 wickets) respectively, before scoring another 84 in a drawn game against Himachal Pradesh.

Shubman Gill's return will boost the side further. However, they’ll miss the services of Arshdeep Singh, who has earned an India call-up for the upcoming T20I series against South Africa, and had bagged 12 wickets at 23.25 in the Group stage earlier. Baltej Singh, the right-arm quick, would be one to watch out for, having taken 18 scalps at 15, including two five-fors thus far.


Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh too, boast the promising Rajat Patidar, Kuldeep Sen and Kumar Kartikeya in their ranks to form a formidable outfit. They played out a draw against Kerala on a batting paradise in Rajkot first up, with Yash Dubey (289) and Patidar (142) being the standouts - the former with the second-highest individual score in the tournament thus far. They bundled out Meghalaya for 61 in the next game to set it up for an innings and 301-run win, before defeating Gujarat by 106 runs.

Dubey, Patidar and Shubham Sharma have racked up over 300 runs, with Sharma having contributed 111, 92 and 103* respectively in the two wins. Kartikeya and Gaurav Yadav have bagged 12 wickets each, while the experienced Ishwar Pandey has 11 wickets to his name.

The semi-finals will be played in Alur and at the Just Cricket Academy ground respectively between June 14 and 18, before the Chinnaswamy Stadium hosts the final from June 22.

 

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