It Wasn't the IPL That Buried Ranji—It Was the Broadcaster's Schedule: An Audit of Domestic Cricket's Quiet Demise

At a Ranji Trophy match in Mumbai one January morning, I counted the spectators in the first session on my fingers. Thirteen. Four sat under the scoreboard, two held printed scorecards, and one elderly gentleman—older than me, I suspect—was marking every ball in his notebook. I have seen this scene dozens of times across five decades, but this time something was different: the board outside the pavilion announced that the match was being streamed live. Not on a television channel—on an OTT platform's "domestic cricket" feed. Thirteen spectators in the ground, and the director behind the cameras deciding which angle would make the match look "alive." The scorecard later said the match was a thriller; the tape said twelve decisions were made not on the field but on boardroom tables and broadcast contracts. The easiest story about the death of the Ranji Trophy is that the IPL ate it. That story sells well. You hear it on television panels: "IPL money pulled kids away from Ranji." But that story ignores a basic number—the Ranji Trophy is still India's largest domestic tournament, with 38 teams and over 130 matches a season. No competing league has that scale. What has died is not Ranji's calendar but Ranji's audience—and the killer is not the IPL, it is the broadcast schedule. Look at the contract the BCCI signed with Star India in 2026. A five-year deal worth roughly Rs 6,138 crore, which included domestic cricket broadcast rights. On the surface this looks like a boon for Ranji. But read the terms: Star was not obliged to broadcast every Ranji match live—it was to show "selected" matches, and the selection criterion was not the quality of cricket but slot availability. That is, whenever an Indian team international, or the IPL, or a major tennis Grand Slam fell at the same time, Ranji was pushed to a "digital platform." And pushing to digital means: no promo, no pre-show, no highlights package. The form of cricket that produced Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar was reduced to the third tab of an app. I call this the hidden selection process. Just as the IPL auction's purse decides which player goes to which team, the broadcaster's schedule decides which domestic match will "exist" and which will not. A bid is a story about a cricketer's market value; a broadcast slot is a story about his visibility. And visibility is the first rung of selection today. In the 2026-24 Ranji season, when Sarfaraz Khan kept scoring runs, the debate was not about how his bat looked—it was about which channel showed his match. A player whose match was not shown stayed in the record books; one whose match was shown entered the conversation. Selectors are human too, and humans see what they are shown. I have a diary from the 1990s. In the Bombay cricket circuit back then there was a strong tradition: after Ranji matches, local newspapers carried three or four paragraphs of report, mentioning the bowler's line and length and the batsman's footwork. That reporting was a parallel data base for selectors. When a board selector disagreed over a name, he would place those clippings on the table. That clipping culture is nearly gone today, because local papers have neither the reporters nor the budget to cover those matches. The space the newspaper vacated was filled by no one—no data desk, no independent scouting network. The broadcaster showed the match, but no one took responsibility for telling its story. Now look at the argument both the board and the broadcaster repeat: "There is no audience for domestic cricket, so there is no investment." That argument is inverted. There is no audience because there is no investment. Over the past few years I have noted attendance at County Championship matches in England—crowds are thin there too, but the broadcast is different. County coverage is app-based, with ball-by-ball commentary, pitch maps and each player's last five matches running alongside. The audience number is small, but the audience that exists is an informed audience—and an informed audience is what is valuable to a sponsor. In India, Ranji broadcast still runs on the old Doordarshan-era mentality: camera on the field, commentary in the box, and data nowhere. Empty stands do not empty the game; they expose the mechanics. Let me add another number. In 2026 the BCCI announced a new media rights policy for domestic cricket, under which digital rights for Ranji and other domestic tournaments were sold separately. The theoretical benefit was that smaller platforms could bid and coverage would grow. In practice the opposite happened: rights fragmented, and no single platform has either the full season's data or the archive. If a researcher today asks which bowler took the most wickets in the first session of the 2026-20 Ranji season, there is no single integrated source to answer. When you cannot keep a record of your own tournament, how can you expect anyone else to remember it? Here I must doubt my own argument. I said above that the broadcast schedule is the killer, not the IPL. But is that entirely true? The IPL has changed the domestic calendar so that Ranji is now compressed into November-December, whereas it once stretched from October to March. That compression has stacked matches on top of each other. When eight Ranji matches start on the same day, the broadcaster has no choice but to pick one. So the IPL did not kill Ranji directly, but it created the calendar pressure that forced the broadcaster to choose—and the broadcaster's choice always tilts toward the bigger brand. So am I saying the IPL is innocent? No. I am saying the IPL is not the accused but a co-accused, and the real trial should be held over broadcast priorities. A second doubt: can the audience come back? Last year I saw an experiment. A state association opened two Ranji matches free for schools, with one condition—the school would bear the bus cost. On both days there were about four hundred children in the stands. The noise was not what you hear at the IPL, but the noise was real. I went to that match, and I saw what the children were cheering—not a six, but a catch taken at slip. So when a match is shown, Ranji can generate excitement too. The problem is not the format, it is access. But I will not draw a "Ranji renaissance" from one experience. One match, one school, one day—that is not a second data point, it is only an observation. I will have to wait for the second season. Where I am certain is this: the domestic cricket crisis is not technical, it is one of priority. The board has money—BCCI revenue in 2026 was above Rs 6,000 crore. The question is how much of it is spent on domestic cricket's data desk and independent scouting. The answer: almost nothing. Until a digital archive of domestic matches is built with every ball's data, every player's profile and every match's video—and until that archive is accessible to everyone, not just a select few—Ranji will remain a calendar entry, not a selection pathway. Look ahead. The 2026 domestic season is about to begin. This time, when a Ranji match starts, ask one question before the scoreboard: is this match being "shown" on some channel or app that day, or is it merely "available"? That is the difference. Being shown is a decision; being available is an accident. And if that decision is again taken from the broadcaster's slot chart, then we should accept that the real date of Ranji's death will not be when the last match is played—it will be the date when someone last decided to watch it.