There is no going into a safe house around the fact that there’s a sizeable and visible difference between cricket teams of North Eastern states and of other states in the country.
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If truth be told, comparing both the entities is quite unfair because North Eastern states had received affiliation from the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) only a few years ago. On the other hand, cricket teams of other states have maintained rich legacies for themselves spanning across decades in the Indian domestic circuit.
Having said that, one can’t ignore the differences when these teams lock horns against each other in domestic tournaments. Barring an upset here or there in the last half-a-decade or so, most of matches between North Eastern states and other states have resulted in archetype one-sided encounters.
Dinesh Karthik expresses concerns around North East teams facing Elite teams in league stages
Veteran India wicket-keeper batter Dinesh Karthik, who has been there and done that in the Indian domestic scene for a couple of decades now, has expressed concerns around North Eastern teams playing Elite teams in league stages of domestic tournaments.
Karthik took to social media platform Twitter right after his domestic team Tamil Nadu’s innings during their recently concluded Vijay Hazare Trophy 2022-23 match against Arunachal Pradesh in Bengaluru.
Tamil Nadu registering the highest List A innings total on the back of wicket-keeper batter Narayan Jagadeesan scoring the highest individual score in List A cricket has powered them to the biggest List A victory (by runs) in the history of cricket. A mammoth 435-run victory for Tamil Nadu has once again ignited debate around North Eastern teams playing in a group of their own.
Also on another side note
Does it make sense to have the north east teams play the elite teams in the league phase .
It just topples the run rates of teams and imagine if a match against one of these teams gets rained off!Can’t they have a separate group and then qualify ?
— DK (@DineshKarthik) November 21, 2022
It is noteworthy that this is not to demean any team but such gargantuan losses have it in themselves to kill the morale of suffering players. In such a situation, North Eastern teams playing in a separate group with a qualification-relegation format into other groups would really reduce the number of one-sided matches. Furthermore, the same would also provide an incentive for the best team among their group.
In what has been such a day for North Eastern teams, November 21, 2022, has witnessed Madhya Pradesh beating Nagaland by 321 runs, Rajasthan beating Meghalaya by 296 runs and Maharashtra beating Mizoram by 183 runs
