The Invisible Ladder of Ranji: When the Domestic Cricket Hero Is Reduced to a Hostel Rent

On a November morning last year, I stood behind a twenty-three-year-old left-arm spinner in the nets at Indore's Holkar Stadium. There was dew on the grass, the ball was old, and for the fourth over running he was landing his seam in exactly the same spot — the same spot from which he had taken fourteen wickets the previous Ranji season. I asked him what his biggest dream for this season was. He stopped the ball, thought for a moment, and said: "Sir, my hostel rent is three months overdue. Let me pay that first, then I'll dream."

That sentence stayed with me for three weeks. Because it is not the story of one player. It is the story of an entire tournament that we hear about every year, that is broadcast every year, and about which we say nothing every year. The Ranji Trophy is the ladder on which every Indian star has climbed to the top — and ninety percent of the players who climb it never reach the top, and their stories never reach any screen.

The economics of domestic cricket rest on a strange paradox: the tournament that produces every Indian Test cricketer offers its players an income that depends on a single IPL auction that calls only a few hundred names each year.

Over the past few years I have recorded many conversations with Ranji players. A twenty-three-year-old fast bowler told me that his match fee and daily allowance together come to roughly three lakh rupees a season — if he plays every match. Another said he has to bear the train fare from his home town to the match city himself when the board's booking is delayed. These sound like small things, but these small things reveal whom the system treats as a professional and whom it treats merely as a player.

The direct effect is on the cricket. A domestic spinner who bowls thirty overs in a four-day match has no scientific recovery plan. I heard from a physio that many Ranji teams have a single physio for the entire season, who doubles as trainer and masseur. This is the same tournament from which emerge the players we watch in Test cricket for the next five years.

Here is something I have seen overlooked more than anything else: we treat Ranji as a 'trial ground', when it is itself a full profession. In our eyes, Ranji means — which young player will go to the next IPL. But that tournament also contains players who have crossed thirty, who will never play the IPL, and who are playing simply because this is their career. For them Ranji is not a ladder, it is the destination. And our entire media economy ignores them.

I remember, in 2026, when I worked on that six-episode series marking ten years since the 2026 T20 World Cup, I tracked down eleven of the fifteen squad members. In that series I began every episode not with the score but with an object — a scuffed ball, a wet outfield, a sponsor board. Because I believe the biggest story in cricket is not the one written on the scoreboard but the one buried beneath it. In Ranji's case that story is — a tournament with almost no broadcast, whose matches get no more than two paragraphs of newspaper coverage, and whose players have no reliable structure of financial security.

Earlier this year I spoke to a former Ranji captain who now coaches. He said the biggest problem is that for the board Ranji is an 'event', while for the player it is his 'career'. An event ends; a career does not. And when the event ends, that player has nothing until the next season — no contract, no salary, no security.

Here is a fact I repeat every time someone talks about the 'glamour' of Ranji: the gap between the match fee a player receives in India's domestic tournaments and the contract he receives in the IPL is many times over. A Ranji player who plays ten four-day matches across a full season does not earn as much in total as a single IPL match in which he sits on the bench. This gap is not merely economic — it determines which player can access what level of preparation, what level of physiotherapy, and what level of mental support.

Last year I spoke to a player who had scored over five hundred runs in Ranji and found no buyer at the IPL auction. He said: "Sir, I have given my whole life to this game. When I am on the field, everything feels fine. But when the season ends and I go home, I feel I chose wrong." I did not write that sentence for a documentary — I heard it in a hotel lobby, where he was waiting for his agent.

In this whole matter the media's role is the weakest link, and it is the most overlooked. We journalists cover Ranji matches, but most of the time that coverage is limited to scores and statistics. We do not write the name of the player who took five wickets on the fourth morning, landing the ball on the seam in the dew. We do not write about his finances, his preparation, his struggle. Because we have no easy way to reach him — and by the time we do, that player may not be there next season.

One more thing must be added here. After the arrival of the WPL in women's cricket, the debate has intensified over where the money and the broadcast go. I think the same question should be asked of Ranji. The real test of the WPL is not how many people watched its final, but whether its money and airtime are reaching the next generation of girls. In exactly the same way, the real test of Ranji is not who won its final, but whether its players have confidence about the next season.

Last year, at a Ranji match, I saw an elderly spectator who came every day, sat in the same seat, and said nothing all day. When I asked him whom he came to watch, he said: "My son plays. He is the twelfth man. He probably won't play, but I come so that he feels someone is watching." This is the scene that never made it into my camera, but will always remain in my notebook.

The counter-intuitive thing in this whole debate is that we treat Ranji as a 'factory of the future', when it is itself a 'need of the present'. If we want to see Indian Test cricket strong over the next ten years, we must see Ranji not merely as a trial but as a professional league — where the player has contract security, a standard of physiotherapy, and respect in media coverage.

I do not have an easy solution. But I think the beginning can be a small thing — adding to every Ranji match report the name of the player who did something extraordinary that day. Not just the score, not just the statistics, but the moment that was life-changing for that player. Because until we know them by name, they will remain just a number on the scorecard.

And the next time a young player tells you his dream is to pay his hostel rent, remember — he is not dreaming. He is telling you the truth of a system we built, and the responsibility to change it is ours.

The question is not how long the Ranji Trophy will last. The question is whether we will ever see it with the respect its players earn on the field every day.