Indian Cricket Team's Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, and Rohit Sharma are going to make a comeback in domestic cricket after a long gap through Ranji Trophy 2024-25 season.
They are set to follow BCCI’s directive of bringing international players back into domestic cricket. The move will see them play their first Ranji Trophy game in a while.
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Let's dive into the memory lane and take a look at what happened when Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, and Rohit Sharma played Ranji Trophy games last time.
BCCI directed seniors to play Ranji Trophy
The Indian team had to face defeat in the Test series against New Zealand and Australia, in which the failure of the batsmen was also a reason.
Virat Kohli had scored only one century and one half-century in the 8 Tests played in these two series.
Apart from him, captain Rohit Sharma and wicketkeeper batsman Rishabh Pant had also completely failed.
After that, head coach Gautam Gambhir had said that everyone will have to play domestic cricket and then BCCI had also tightened the rules and directed senior cricketers to play Ranji Trophy.
After the end of Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy, the group stage matches of Ranji Trophy 2024-25 are returning again from January 23.
While players like Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant had agreed to play against their respective teams on January 23.
Virat had made himself unavailable citing neck pain. Due to this, questions were being raised whether Kohli will not play in the match between Delhi and Railways from January 30?
The answer to this has also been received now because Kohli has told DDCA President Rohan Jaitley that he is available for this match.
Virat Kohli's last Ranji match
Virat Kohli, who has been playing and scoring runs continuously in every format for the last one and a half decade in international cricket, is now returning to Ranji Trophy after 4468 days.
Former Indian captain has agreed to play for his home team Delhi and will take the field in the Ranji Trophy 2024-25 match against Railways from January 30.
Earlier, Kohli had stepped on the field for Delhi in the 2012-13 season.
Kohli's last match that season was against Uttar Pradesh, when the two teams clashed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Ghaziabad between November 2 and November 5.
However, that match was not good for Kohli and his team Delhi and the team had to face defeat.
While Kohli could score only 14 runs in the first innings, he was out after scoring 43 runs in the second innings.
Incidentally, both times Kohli was dismissed by Uttar Pradesh's star fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
Rishabh Pant's last Ranji match
Rishabh Pant has declared himself available for Delhi's next Ranji Trophy 2024-25 match against Saurashtra starting January 23 in Rajkot.
Pant last played a Ranji Trophy match in the 2017-2018 season.
He captained Delhi against Vidarbha in the Ranji Trophy final played between 29 December 2017 and 1 January 2018 in Indore.
Pant could score only 21 and 32 runs in that match, losing his wicket to Rajneesh Gurbani and Siddhesh Neral in the two innings respectively.
Under Pant's captaincy, Delhi lost this match and Vidarbha won the Ranji Trophy title.
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Rohit Sharma's last Ranji match
Rohit Sharma will participate in Ranji Trophy after almost a decade.
Rohit played his last Ranji Trophy match for Mumbai in 2015 against Uttar Pradesh.
In this match played at Wankhede, Rohit Sharma scored a brilliant century and scored 113 runs in the first innings.
Mumbai posted 610/9 dec in the first innings.
Mumbai did not bat again in that game as they enforced follow-on on Uttar Pradesh after bowling them out for 440.
UP were 140/1 in the second innings when both teams settled for a draw but on the basis of first innings, Mumbai had collected 3 points.