Domestic Reckoning

Indian cricket has rarely lacked confidence. Nor has it ever been short of money. What it has occasionally lacked, most recently and painfully at home, is humility. The Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) decision to compel all centrally contracted players to turn up for at least two matches of the Vijay Hazare Trophy is an overdue admission that the country’s cricketing superstructure has grown detached from its foundations.

The immediate provocation for the move lay in India’s shocking defeats at home against first New Zealand, and most recently South Africa - losses that were unprecedented. For decades, India had turned home conditions into a near-insurmountable advantage as spinning tracks tamed visiting batsmen and victories at home were treated as a birthright rather than an achievement. That certitude has now evaporated. The defeats exposed a side no longer reliably dominant against spin, uncertain in defence, impatient in innings construction and disturbingly prone to collapse. Years of IPL and T20 cricket have eroded the techniques once honed through long domestic seasons.

As a result, the BCCI has now cracked the whip by sending its star players to Rajkot, Cuttack and Indore - to the unglamorous, sparsely televised arenas of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Playing domestic cricket, the board has made clear, is no longer optional.

In the age of the T20 gold rush, the modern Indian cricketer is among the most handsomely compensated athletes in the world. The Indian Premier League has compressed an entire career’s earnings into two frenetic months. The risk, long warned of and now realised, is that the longer test formats begin to feel like a chore.

The Hazare mandate seeks to restore balance. One-day domestic cricket, played without cheerleaders or television auctions, forces batters to build innings and bowlers to work through spells. It demands patience, adaptability and resilience.

The symbolism matters too. By insisting that Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma turn up alongside Shubman Gill and Suryakumar Yadav, the BCCI has defused the perception that senior players are being singled out for ritual humiliation. Rules, in this instance, apply to everyone. That is healthy for a dressing room increasingly stratified by fame and franchise value.

None of this should be overstated. Two matches of domestic cricket will not, by themselves, repair technical flaws or arrest decline. Nor will they roll back the commercial logic of modern cricket. The T20 format is not going away. After all, it has broadened the game’s reach and underwritten its finances. But when it becomes the organising principle of a cricketing culture, the harmful consequences that hamstring real cricket – the long form – are predictable.

The Hazare directive is an acknowledgment that excellence must be reacquired the old-fashioned way: by playing for your state, on imperfect pitches, against hungry opponents, with little reward beyond professional pride.

For a board often accused of excess and indulgence, this is a rare act of restraint.