The impact of the Ranji final will be felt beyond cricket in J & K

Bishan Singh Bedi, thou shouldst be living at this hour! Jammu and Kashmir, a team he coached and instilled self-belief in is playing the final of the Ranji Trophy. He would not have been surprised — he had said more than a decade ago that J & K were getting ready to surprise the established teams.

Soon after Bedi was appointed coach in 2011, he saw there was talent aplenty, but the team lacked confidence. This meant ambitions were limited — and limiting. Bedi’s strategy was to hone the talent and inspire self-belief. In 2013-14, J & K made their first Ranji quarterfinal. In June 2014, all-rounder Parvez Rasool played for India. Under Rasool’s captaincy, J & K beat multiple champions Mumbai outright the same year. These were propitious early steps.

As Rasool said in an interview to this newspaper, “Bedi sir came into J & K cricket, and that’s when our mindset changed. Before that, participation was enough. The great man told us: ‘Beta, go and compete, you have the skills.’”

Bedi was an inspirational figure in the development of cricket in the north zone. He captained Delhi to their first Ranji title, and coached Punjab to their first. North Zone first won the Duleep Trophy under his captaincy “It was gratifying to show the rest of the country that some other teams could play too,” he said, only half-jokingly, many years later.

J & K players have not articulated such a thought, but don’t be surprised if they are thinking it. It was 23 years after their debut in the national championship that they won their first match. Dismissed for 43 and 79, they lost their inaugural match in 1959-60 to East Punjab by an innings. They lost their second too by an innings, again twice failing to reach 100, this time against Southern Punjab. In 1982-83, they finally won, beating Services by four wickets. That was the season Karnataka won their third Ranji title.

Now, for the second year in succession, teams once considered the minnows are in the final of the Ranji Trophy. Last year it was Kerala who caused idealists to connect with the essential romanticism of sport . And now it is J & K, perhaps an even more unlikely candidate when seen through the glasses of the last century.

The underdog succeeding against the odds is one of sport’s enduring (and endearing) tropes. J & K are up against the second most successful Ranji team playing in their 15th final, but they will be telling themselves that one focused effort should do it, and will attempt to summon up their energies for just that.

Already on the first day, there are indications that J & K have not let the pressure get to them. There is a solidity to their approach as the centurion Shubham Pundir and Yawer Hassan showed; class and grace too as displayed by the unbeaten Abdul Samad. J & K have a platform to build on.

When your team is doing well, it is tempting to assume that history began a only couple of years ago. In an interview to a national newspaper, J & K’s coach Ajay Sharma has said he was “furious” when he first took charge four years ago, and “it took him some time to understand” the players. “I realised,” he said, “that if these players are groomed mentally, their mindset would change…I changed myself by going down to their level.”

J & K have had to live down such condescension for years now, but after this, no team is going to take them lightly. Sharma deserves some credit of course, but not all of it!

In the last decade, five different teams have won the Ranji Trophy, a testimony to the spread of talent in the country. Mumbai have won twice in this period, but Karnataka and Delhi not at all.

Cricket romantics who are lifelong supporters of Karnataka cricket might find themselves in a bind. Do they support the home team or look at the bigger picture and hope that J & K accomplish the improbable and change the face of cricket, and perhaps parts of society in their troubled state?

There is more than cricket involved here, something Bedi would have understood.