From sublime to ridiculous--the story of UP cricket

Lucknow, Jan 8 (UNI) From sublime to ridiculous--this is the story of Uttar Pradesh cricket team which won the Ranji Trophy championship last year but facing possible relegation in the Ranji Trophy this year.

It was not long ago when the cricket fraternity was in awe with the enormous talent this state had and it was amply displayed when four of its players--Kaif, Raina, R P Singh and Piyush Chawla represented Team India at one time.

The cricket pundits and the policy makers were all praise for the UP's cricket and Mohammad Kaif's leadership abilities were subject of the discussions. This was really not long ago.

No one was suprised when the UP won the Ranji trophy and was runners--up in the one-day tournament. The young talent in UP was all for display with Piyush Chawla, Ravikant Shukla and Tanmay Srivastava all led the India under-19 team indicating the positives to come in the future.

Now, the situation is reversed. Even the top Team India players could not save UP from the blushes in the Ranji elite group clashes.

UP, at the bottom of the table along with Tamil Nadu, is faced with a possibilty of being relegated to a lower rung--a certain disgrace for a team which had won the national championship only last year.

The defending champions with just four points from six matches would have to force an outright win against Andhra Pradesh to avoid relegation to the Plate group. Baroda, with 17 points, is leading the group followed by Karnataka with 15 points. Andhra with 12 points have the chance to make it to the last two from the group if they beat UP.

The performance of UP failed, despite the presence of Kaif and Raina who were dropped from the national side. Cricket experts attribute the below par performance of UP to the faulty selection and the poor handling of the team resources by skipper Kaif, who was hailed by the then chief selector Kiran More as the national captaincy material.

That was the time all the eyes of the cricket lovers were on UP with the kind of talent it was producing. Now the things have changed for the worse with Kaif, Raina and R P Singh losing favour of the selectors but their mediocre performances in the domestic cricket have not helped their cause.

UP will have to gear themselves for the last Super league tie against Andhra Pradesh in Kanpur from January 10.

UNI