After 18 years, a Test match played in Delhi will have no city player in Indian team

After 18 long years, a Test match will be played in Delhi this October without a local player in the Indian squad. The last time a Test was staged at the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium without a Delhi player in the Indian XI was against Pakistan in November 2007. Now, the Indian squad announced for the two-Test series against the West Indies has no player from Delhi.

Swashbuckling batsman-wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, presently the lone automatic starter in the Indian Test team, is still recovering from the foot fracture he sustained during the Test series in England recently. And pacer Harshit Rana has been dropped as the Indian team will rely more on spinners on tailor-made home pitches.

That means no Delhi player in the 15-man squad announced for the series. The first Test begins on October 2 in Ahmedabad, while the Delhi Test starts on October 10.

After the 2007 Test against Pakistan, the Ferozeshah Kotla, as it was called for decades before being renamed Arun Jaitley Stadium in 2019, hosted six more Tests and several Delhi players were part of those encounters. Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir (who will be here as team coach for the West Indies Test), Ishant Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Shikhar Dhawan have appeared in those six Tests.

Weak credentials

Former Delhi and North Zone captain Vinay Lamba points out that it is not the first time it has happened. “At least one Delhi player should have been there. But I don’t know what is the idea behind it [combination of the squad]. They should have played Harshit against the West Indies; he could have been picked in the 15, at least,” Lamba, a former chairman of Delhi’s senior selection committee, told Patriot.

A former opening batsman, Lamba, while referring to the city’s rapidly drying supplyline to the Indian team, points to Delhi players’ weak credentials for staking claim as the team has been repeatedly failing to qualify for the knockout rounds of the premier Ranji Trophy.

“Definitely, every Delhiite will feel sorry, but being sorry is one part. And as a Delhiite, and a former Delhi cricketer, I too feel sad. But the fact remains that for years Delhi hasn’t made it to the knockout rounds of the Ranji Trophy. It is most important that your team qualifies,” he stressed, pointing to Delhi’s failure to progress to the Ranji Trophy quarterfinals for six consecutive seasons.

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Once the team qualifies for the knockout rounds, players get more opportunities to showcase their skill and stake a claim for selection in higher teams.

“Even in the North Zone squad for the Duleep Trophy this season, a handful of Delhi players were selected,” Lamba said of Yash Dhull, Ayush Badoni, and Harshit Rana.

Kohli will be missed

The last Test that Delhi hosted was in 2023, against Australia, and Virat Kohli was the lone Delhiite in that Indian team – a trend that has reached its nadir with no Delhi representation in the national team. He will be sorely missed, as he has since retired from Tests and T20s. He notched up his second-highest Test score of 243 not out against Sri Lanka at the Kotla in 2017. Two other Delhiites — Ishant and Dhawan — were part of the India XI in that drawn match.

Kohli’s fans will, however, have to be content that the new pavilion at the stadium, which houses the dressing rooms for the two teams, is named after their hero.

Among the top young aspirants from Delhi for places in the Indian team are Yash Dhull, under whose captaincy India won the 2022 Under-19 World Cup and who is in fine form presently, and Ayush Badoni.