The fortunes are changing for Ishan Kishan. 

Earlier this year, towards the end of the 2023/24 domestic season in India, he was in the headlines for the wrong reasons. Having taken a break midway through India’s tour of South Africa, Kishan didn’t feature in the final two months of the domestic season. 

In fact, Kishan hasn’t represented Jharkhand since December 2022. 

Jay Shah, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary, issued a directive that all fit centrally contracted players should make themselves available for selection in domestic cricket, with Shreyas Iyer and Deepak Chahar also under the fire. 

Kishan stayed away from domestic cricket and consequently, along with Iyer, was removed from the list of centrally contracted players. 

The wicketkeeper-batter played a lot of cricket for India in 2023, including being a part of India’s World Cup squad in 2023 and also making his Test debut. However, he was nowhere under contention for the T20 World Cup selection, owing to the fiasco mentioned above and a moderate Indian Premier League (IPL) season. 

Fast forward to the 2024/25 season. Kishan has been announced as Jharkhand’s captain in their Ranji Trophy squad for the first two matches. Virat Singh led the team last season, and Saurabh Tiwary took the reins in the last match as a farewell gesture. Virat is now the vice-captain of this side, making it clear that the state association is backing Kishan to find his roots in domestic cricket again. 

After all, he is the biggest star from Jharkhand cricket since MS Dhoni. 

“Correct and wrong decisions are part and parcel of a player’s life. But I think he is a brilliant player and the future of Indian cricket,” said Saurabh Tiwary, the former Jharkhand captain and India cricketer, in an exclusive chat with Cricket.com at the sidelines of the Legends League Cricket. 

The trust Jharkhand cricket is showing in Kishan is a two-way thing. Before the domestic season began with the Duleep Trophy, the left-hander came forward to communicate his availability for the Buchi Babu Tournament in August, thus committing himself to a pre-season red-ball competition. He was named the captain and scored a hundred in the first fixture against Madhya Pradesh. 

Kishan then played for India C in the Duleep Trophy, starting with a knock of 111. Later, he played in the Irani Trophy for the Rest of India. 

“He is playing domestic cricket now. Recently scored a hundred in the Buchi Babu and in the Duleep Trophy. Undoubtedly, he is a good player and the future of Indian cricket. He is also the youngest to score a double hundred (in ODIs),” said Tiwary around 11 days before Jharkhand announced their squad. 

Elevated to a senior role, Kishan would want to arrest his streak of dipping down as the season progresses. Despite 24 50-plus scores in 90 innings, the 26-year-old averages 38.97 in first-class cricket. Even this season, he followed his 111 with scores of 1, 5, 17 and 38. 

Tiwary, though, attributed Kishan’s ups and downs to the varying conditions across the country. In India, most states host domestic cricket at multiple venues, with many of them without any scope of broadcast due to logistical challenges and other factors. Hence, there is a big uncertainty factor around the pitches. Jharkhand itself has hosted Ranji Trophy matches in four venues in the state.

“You sometimes play on green tracks, sometimes on turning pitches, so the performances go up and down,” Tiwary began to explain. 

“The challenge in India is the number of venues. Suppose there is a game in Jharkhand, then you don’t know if it would be in Ranchi, Jamshedpur or Dhanbad. Each of these venues has a different wicket. But an international fixture will always be in a particular stadium. So, players are not always aware of the pitches,” he said. 

The 34-year-old also stressed on the “changing culture” in domestic cricket. “You play home and away cricket, and now domestic cricket is played on result-oriented wickets. We used to have very few result-oriented wickets earlier in domestic cricket, but now the culture has been changing over the last 8-10 years,” he added. 

Kishan has led Jharkhand in six first-class matches before. He became their second youngest captain, leading the side in six matches in the 2018/19 Ranji Trophy season, aged only 20. However, Jharkhand is truly stepping into a new era in Kishan’s second stint as captain. 

Jharkhand head into the new season with three of their greats retiring at the end of the last season. Saurabh Tiwary (116 first-class matches, 3 ODIs), Shahbaz Nadeem (140 first-class matches including two Tests) and Varun Aaron (66 first-class matches including nine Tests, and nine ODIs) played over 250 red-ball matches for Jharkhand combined. Their retirement is a big void in Jharkhand cricket, and Tiwary reckons it will take some time for the new players to find their feet.

“A lot of senior players have retired recently. A new team is building, and it takes time to settle. Ranji Trophy feeds players to the national team which tells you about the competitive level of the tournament.

“It will take 2-3 years. When we came to play Ranji Trophy, it also took us a few seasons to settle,” the former skipper said. 

The Jharkhand team was in a similar phase in 2009/10 when Tiwary led the team for the first time. Having returned from the U19 World Cup victory in early 2008, he was leading Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy at the age of 19 and scored 593 runs in the season, averaging 98.3, with three hundreds. However, the team, playing the Plate League then, had to stay content with draws in each of their five matches.

“The Jharkhand team is back in that phase where most of the players are new. I guess only one or two players in the current Jharkhand squad have played 40 matches or more. Around 80% have played less than 10 matches. 

So we shouldn’t put a lot of load on the players. We should support them and in 2-3 years time, these players will give you performances too,” the left-handed batter elaborated. 

Who are the players to look out for?

Kumar Kushagra and Anukul Roy are the young stars in Jharkhand’s squad announced for the first two matches as Tiwary said. He also took the left-arm pacer Sushant Mishra’s name who has already donned the Gujarat Titans’ jersey in IPL. 

Jharkhand will face Assam in Guwahati in their first-round fixture starting on October 11. They will then fly to Ahmedabad to take on the Railways from October 18. 

Jharkhand’s best finish in the Ranji Trophy was the semi-final finish in the 2016/17 season under Tiwary who led in eight of the 10 matches in that competition. Since then, they have reached the quarterfinal twice and would hope to go a few steps ahead this time. 

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