The Empty Ranji Gallery and the Packed IPL Walls: Which Room Indian Cricket Coverage Left Behind

I was sitting alone in the press box at Chepauk that day. Day two of the Ranji Trophy match between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, three in the afternoon. The scoreboard read 187 for four, and a 22-year-old left-handed batsman was playing a cover drive whose technique I had been tracking for two seasons. In that exact moment, three alerts arrived on my phone—the announcement of the IPL auction date, a franchise's new head coach appointment, and a rumour of a foreign fast bowler being sold for 12 crore. There was no one else in the press box. Twelve years ago, on this same ground, at least eleven journalists would have covered this same match.

This piece is not a complaint. It is an accounting of a change I watched happen with my own eyes, and it is part of a question Indian cricket journalism has so far deferred. Since the mid-1990s, I have covered the Ranji Trophy as a genuine national beat—first for The Statesman, later for The Telegraph and The Times of India, writing the debuts of players who would go on to become the spine of the Test team. Covering the 2026 match-fixing fallout and the 2026 IPL spot-fixing arrests, I also saw how cricket's money and cricket's news began flowing in the same direction. But what I am writing today is a different question. This is not a complaint about integrity; it is a description of structure.

What Was Sold Was Seen; What Was Built Was Overlooked

The easiest accusation against the IPL is that it killed Test cricket in India. That accusation does not survive the facts. Test match attendance in India has risen over the past decade, not fallen—Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad was full for the 2026 Test against England, and during the 2026 England tour, crowds in Rajkot and Visakhapatnam were no smaller than any IPL weekend match. What has actually been lost is the first-class structure that produced these Test players—and with it, the coverage that kept an eye on that structure.

In the 2026-06 season, an average Ranji Trophy match would have seven to nine newspaper representatives present. This season, at that same match in Chepauk, there were two—me and a local photographer. I pulled this figure from my own diary, and my editorial colleagues have confirmed the same trend. The cause is complex, but the root is simple: coverage money went where advertisers went, and advertisers went where TV audiences went. Ranji matches are not televised. What is not on television is not on the media's agenda.

The direct consequence is that the branch of Indian cricket journalism that watched and understood players as they were being made has almost disappeared. Today, when a 19-year-old fast bowler suddenly appears in the Test team, his first detailed profile is written after his IPL debut, not after his first five-wicket haul in Ranji. The story of a player that once began before the stage now begins after he has reached it.

The 2026-19 Pace Revolution: Who Wrote It, Who Left It

Here I must mention my most important long-form feature. From December 2026 to January 2026, I spent three months with the Indian team in Australia—during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, in the hotel, at training, and in the final sessions of several matches. On that tour, India won the series with four fast bowlers—Bumrah, Shami, Ishant and Umesh—who took fifty wickets between them. I noted the moment in Sydney when a young debutant spoke to me about his anxiety, and I made his emotions the centre of the story.

But what I did not tell the world at the time was this: the roots of that pace revolution lay in Ranji and domestic grounds, not in the IPL. Bumrah built his understanding of line and length in Ranji and domestic matches, Shami learned to reverse the old ball playing for Bengal, and Ishant took wickets in his early years on those green Ranji pitches where no camera was present. This pace revolution was not bought, nor was it borrowed—it was argued into existence by a coaching culture that changed what the system valued. But no one was there to write that argument.

Who Is Covering the Board, and Who Is Working for It

During the 2026 match-fixing investigations, I heard a question that still troubles me. A senior journalist said then that when the BCCI runs the world game's money, how does an Indian cricket journalist decide whether he is covering the board or working for it? That question became sharper after the 2026 IPL spot-fixing arrests, and it is sharper still today.

But let me be clear: this article is not the answer to that question. This article is about the empty Ranji gallery. If I merge these two questions into one piece, I will be moving toward the very mistake I criticise—seeing everything through the lens of corruption. The question here is simply this: how did Indian cricket lose oversight of its most essential production centre?

The Counter-Intuitive Reading: The Auction Did Not Kill It; the Oversight Did

The common perception is that the IPL auction destroyed domestic cricket. My experience and the available data do not confirm this. The number of teams participating in the Ranji Trophy has increased—there were 28 teams in the 2026-17 season, and roughly the same in 2026-24. Professional contracts in domestic cricket have grown, match fees have risen, and facilities for players have improved. What has declined is the audience and the coverage. And the two are so interlinked that neither survives without the other.

This is the point where outsiders misread. They think money is the cause of Ranji's death. In fact, Ranji's money has increased. What has not increased is the journalist who turns that money into a story. When no story is built, no audience is built; when no audience is built, no advertiser comes; and when no advertiser comes, the publisher does not send a journalist to cover that match. This is a closed loop, and breaking it begins with coverage, not with an auction date.

What to Watch Next

This Ranji season, I have a small plan: I will attend at least ten matches, on grounds where there will be no camera, and I will talk to players whose names are not yet in any auction list. I am not saying my presence will change the system. But my entire career rests on the belief that a journalist's job is to stay late in the room everyone else leaves early—because the story that will be built tomorrow is being written today in that same empty room. I will be there.