Eyeballs on Duleep Trophy as it’s lights out time for domestic cricket
The 2026-27 Duleep Trophy domestic cricket tournament begins this Sunday, marking the start of the Indian cricket calendar. The event features young talent like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and veteran players like Mohammed Shami looking to regain their spot in the national team.
Why it matters
The Duleep Trophy serves as a critical platform for domestic players to showcase their skills for potential selection to the Indian national cricket team.
Duleep Trophy was once an important pit stop in a cricketer’s journey towards the Indian National team. But now, with the mushrooming of glitzy and faster highways to success like the IPL and India-A, the inter-zonal competition has slid down the importance chart.
It is not that the Duleep Trophy is irrelevant; a good performance against the best Ranji Trophy players from the previous season still carries significant value. But it is just one more data point in a cricketer’s graph and not the clincher it once was.
Yet, when the 2026-27 edition starts on Sunday at the BCCI Centre of Excellence here, there will be sufficient interest. As the tournament heralds the beginning of the domestic cricket calendar, players’ first moves will be as important as chess openings.
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