NEW DELHI: The Ranji Trophy has benefited from an unexpected sprinkling of stardust with several big-name India batters returning to domestic cricket looking to find form after their horror run over the last three months.

Rohit Sharma and his team are still smarting from a 3-0 series sweep at home by New Zealand followed by a 3-1 hammering in Australia which ended their decade-long hold on the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

The setbacks also ended their hopes of making a third straight World Test Championship final.

India dropped their woefully out-of-form captain Rohit for the final Test in Australia after he failed as both an opener, his usual role, and in the middle order.

Rohit, who has ruled out Test retirement despite managing one fifty in his last 15 innings in the format, trained with the Mumbai squad at the Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday ahead of the second phase of the Ranji Trophy beginning on Jan 23.

The 37-year-old is likely to play at least one of Mumbai’s remaining two Group A matches, nine years after his last appearance in the country’s premier domestic first-class tournament.

Rohit’s opening partner Yashasvi Jaiswal, who was India’s highest scorer in the five-Test series in Australia, has made himself available for Mumbai’s home match against Jammu and Kashmir next week.

Top-order batter Shubman Gill, who tallied 93 from five innings in Australia, will be seen in action in Punjab’s next match against Karnataka in Bengaluru.

Rishabh Pant, whose natural aggression occasionally bordered on recklessness in Australia, will play Delhi’s next match against Saurashtra. The exciting stumper-batter has not played a Ranji Trophy match since the 2017-18 season.

Batting stalwart Virat Kohli also returned with a battered reputation from Australia having managed 190 in nine innings, including an unbeaten 100 in the series opener in Perth.

Kohli is yet to confirm his return to the tournament he last played in 2012 even though the Indian board has told players to return to domestic cricket to regain their form.

India’s next Test assignment is a five-match series in England from June 20.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2025