TN’s T20 Baazigars

Chennai: On IPL auction day in Chennai last Thursday, Shahrukh Khan was garnering great interest. No, we aren’t talking about the Bollywood superstar and Kolkata Knight Riders’ co-owner, but the Tamil Nadu all-rounder who is named after the actor. A fierce bidding war for the 25-year-old saw him eventually go for a price of Rs5.25 crore to Punjab Kings from a base price of Rs20 lakh. Such bidding wars haven’t been a new phenomenon for Tamil Nadu players in recent years.

Left-arm pacer T Natarajan went for Rs3 crore to Kings XI Punjab in 2017, while mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy was snapped up by the same franchise for Rs8.4 crore ahead of the 2019 edition before moving to Kolkata Knight Riders for Rs4 crore a season later. During the recent auction, opener C Hari Nishaanth and left-arm spinner M Siddharth were picked up by Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Capitals, propelling the number of Tamil Nadu players taking part in IPL 2021 to 13 — R Ashwin, Dinesh Karthik, Washington Sundar, Vijay Shankar, M Ashwin, T Natarajan, Varun Chakravarthy, Shahrukh, N Jagadeesan, Hari Nishaanth, R Sai Kishore, M Siddharth and Sandeep Warrier. It is the most from any one domestic team for this year’s IPL, a significant change from around five years ago when the likes of Ashwin, Karthik and M Vijay were the only TN players featuring in the league.

Experts say, the rise in the number of state players in the annual T20 extravaganza is a result of Tamil Nadu’s success in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. TN won the domestic T20 meet without breaking sweat this season while they had finished runners-up in the previous edition. TN also made the final of the domestic 50-over tournament — Vijay Hazare Trophy — last season. "The larger interest is a direct outcome of TN’s white-ball success. When you are reaching the final stages of a tournament, the team obviously tends to get noticed. Back when there were very few players from TN in the IPL, we never used to qualify for the latter stages," says CSK’s N Jagadeesan, who was the leading run-getter in the Syed Mushtaq Ali campaign.

TN coach D Vasu has been instrumental in this white-ball success. He took over as TN coach at the beginning of the 2019-20 season and the team has hardly put a foot wrong in the shorter formats since then. He pinpoints the emphasis on fitness as a key reason for the team’s turnaround. While TN did win the Vijay Hazare and Deodhar Trophy in 2016-17, they were seldom reaching the latter stages of white-ball tournaments in recent years.

"The idea when I came in was to work on fitness and give opportunities to youngsters. Once we gave a chance to the youngsters, all of them grabbed it with both hands. I am extremely glad. What I want to do is to build bench strength and create competition. Even playing for Tamil Nadu should get very difficult," says Vasu.

The fitness standards expected in the Tamil Nadu camp are the same as the benchmark set for the Indian team. "We have made it clear that the fitness of TN players should be up to the Indian team’s standards. It is an integral part of today’s cricket. If India’s benchmark is 16.5 for the yo-yo test, ours should be the same. Because of the pandemic, we didn’t insist on it this year but we have looked to maintain those standards," says Vasu, who is also quick to credit the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL) for players making a mark.

The tournament — which began in 2016 — has had its share of controversies, but it has enabled youngsters from interiors of the state to share the field with the state’s best cricketers and come to the fore. CSK’s latest local pick, Hari Nishaanth, hails from Coimbatore for instance, and he finished among the top-10 run-getters in the TNPL for the past couple of seasons and then carried that form into the TN set-up.

Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) secretary R S Ramasaamy feels their endeavour to stage the TNPL with a focus on quality is bearing fruit. "TN’s success in white-ball cricket is due to the TNPL. We try to make sure that the atmosphere for a TNPL game is as close to an IPL game as possible. The players get an opportunity to play in front of crowds and under floodlights. That has given them a lot of confidence," observes Ramasaamy.

Amid the recent white-ball success, though, it’s heartening to find that the importance of winning the Ranji Trophy isn’t lost on the TN team. Having not won India’s premier first-class competition since 1987-88, breaking that barren run continues to be their primary focus. "What we need to work on is red-ball cricket. At the end of the day, winning Ranji Trophy is everything for Tamil Nadu cricket. That is our goal. If you want to say that you are a domestic superpower, then you have to win Ranji Trophy," Vasu makes his objective clear.