Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul in focus as Duleep Rd 1 begins

Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul

The presence of a plethora of current superstars, at least for the first round of matches beginning on Thursday, has restored much of the lost sheen to a tournament that occupied pride of place in the Indian domestic calendar, but had become something of a formality over the last several years.

Eye on Test series

This year's Duleep Trophy, to be contested by four teams handpicked by Ajit Agarkar's national selection panel, is the first tournament since the BCCI made participation in domestic competitions mandatory for players not involved in international action. It assumes added significance ahead of a packed schedule for India, who will play 10 Tests (five at home and five in Australia) between September 19 and January 7.

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India's last Test was in Dharamsala in the first week of March; most players have played very little red-ball cricket in the interim and the first set of four-day games, to be played at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here and in Anantapur, will allow them to ease back into long-format mode. Test and ODI skipper Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and R Ashwin were exempted from playing when the squads were announced on August 14 and have since been joined on the sidelines by Mohammed Siraj and Ravindra Jadeja.

The Chinnaswamy outing will mark the return to first-class cricket for the first time since December 2022 of Rishabh Pant, the ebullient wicketkeeper who was involved in a terrible single-car accident just two days before the dawn of 2023. Pant has played both white-ball formats since his international comeback this June; Dhruv Jurel acquitted himself with great credit during his three Test appearances against England, but Pant still holds the aces, given his exploits in the five-day game, among other things.

Battle for middle-order spot

Agarkar and his fellow selectors will look for both form and fitness over the next few days before the team for the Bangladesh Tests is named. There is a scramble for a solitary middle-order berth in the playing XI with the pedigreed KL Rahul and the effervescent Sarfaraz Khan, who made three half-centuries in five innings against England, among the principal contenders. Shreyas Iyer has a point to prove after being axed following a series of poor scores in Test cricket, while this is a great chance for spinners to stake their claim for life after Ashwin and Jadeja, which may not be too far into the future.