This incident has once again put Ranji Trophy venues under the scanner.
It was another instance of poor facilities and bad management that forced Day 3 of the ongoing Ranji Trophy game between Uttar Pradesh vs Kerala to end early.
The teams are locking horns at the St Xaviers College ground at Thumba in Thiruvananthapuram but leaking dressing rooms have once again put Ranji Trophy venues under the scanner.
In a video shared by Indian Express, rainwater can be seen leaking from the roof of the dressing room in multiple places which has now in turn damaged the kit bags of a few of the players.
Check the video of the dressing room below.
Heavy downpour, severe water leakage in the dressing room leads to stumps early on Day 3 between Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. https://t.co/ilsZkupkld pic.twitter.com/hREfUjJXVd
— Express Sports (@IExpressSports)November 8, 2024
Ranji Trophy venues have previously also come under question for poor facilities
This isn’t the first time the facilities at the venue have been criticized. During his final season for Bengal in the Ranji Trophy, former India batter Manoj Tiwary shared his views about the ground in a Facebook Live session.
“We are playing Kerala in a ground, not a stadium despite there being one built years ago, we are being asked to play in a ground on the outskirts of the State. The dressing rooms are such that you cannot even strategise properly since our dressing room and the opposite dressing room are so close to each other that you can hear what the others are saying. There is no privacy. I hope that this is looked into in the future,” Tiwary had said.
In recent seasons, the standards of facilities at First-class venues have come under scrutiny due to their inability to handle certain situations. For example, in the opening round of matches, play was halted on Day 2 of the encounter between Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka at Indore’s Holkar Stadium due to overnight rain. The Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association (MPCA) had transferred the covers from Holkar Stadium to accommodate an international T20I between India and Bangladesh in Gwalior, which led to the rain preventing any play on the second day.
