Mumbai wins Ranji for 41st time ! Claire Polosak to stand with Kathy Cross

Have you heard of Claire Polosak ? – the clue is : she is an Australian and 27 year old High School Science teacher [which is not relevant !]  

There is busy schedule :  11 matches in all  in a league format from 24^th  Feb till 6^th  Mar – in T20 format [for the first time in Asia Cup] –  quickly followed by 35 matches from Mar 8 to Apr 3 – ICC T20 World Cup 2016.

Another Query – do you know what brackets : Sind,  Central Provinces & Berar; Holkar, Gwalior, Kathiawar, Patiala, Madhya Barath, Northern Punjab.##

The news is Mumbai has won the Ranji Trophy again.  For those who do not know history much, Ranji Trophy is a domestic first-class cricket championship played in India between different city and state sides, equivalent to the County Championship in England and the Sheffield Shield in Australia. The competition is named after Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji (Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, also known as "Ranji") This Indian King born in 1872 played in Tests for the English Cricket team and also first-class cricket for Cambridge University, and county cricket for Sussex.  Neville Cardus described him as "the Midsummer night's dream of cricket  Ranji trophy was inaugurated in 1935 by the Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala.

Today, the Ranji Trophy final was delicately poised at the start of the third day. By lunch, it was dead and buried. Mumbai's first-innings lead was 33 when No. 11 Balwinder Sandhu joined Siddhesh Lad; by the time they finished, 33 became 136, aided by poor catching and defensive tactics from Saurashtra. Whatever happened after that was a futile attempt at damage control as Mumbai knocked the stuffing out of Saurashtra and sealed their 41st Ranji Trophy title with an innings win.

Of their 45 appearances in the finals, Bombay has won 41; followed by Karnataka 8; Delhi 7 and Baroda 5.  Not many would have followed the fortunes of the 27 teams.  A 28th team from Chhattisgarh will take part in the tournament from the 2016–17 Ranji Trophy. 

Another match which would have gone unnoticed is the T20 series between India and Sri Lanka.  India Women's spinners stifled the Sri Lanka Women batting, squeezed them to 89 for 9 in their 20 overs, before the top three knocked off the target in 13.5 overs to complete a nine-wicket thumping in the third T20I in Ranchi. The win secured a 3-0 series sweep for India.

More to follow ~ from Mar 15 to Apr 3, there will be 23 matches played between  Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Srilanka; Bangladesh, England, India, Pakistan and West Indies.  The women T20  WC 2016. 

Right from the toss, the gentlemen in the middle with white coats with authority to decide are of seminal importance – the finger going up, signalling or ordering the batsmen to trudge back towards the pavilion.  In  ICC Women’s World Cup India 2013,  there was  Kathy Cross from New Zealand, only female umpire officiating.   On 10^th Feb 2013, she stood in the match between  Sri Lanka Women and  Australia Women; as also  in the match between WI and Australia.

This year, two female umpires are set to officiate at the Women's World T20 for the first time in the tournament's history.  Kathy Cross and Claire Polosak have been named in a 31-person list of officials for the concurrent men's and women's events in India. Cross, from New Zealand, has prior experience of an ICC event, Polosak, however, will be making her first appearance in a global tournament, having overseen the women's World Cup qualifiers in Thailand recently. At 27, will be the youngest official on duty in India, with her first match coming at Mohali on March 18, when New Zealand take on Ireland.

Sydney-based schoolteacher by profession, Polosak made another slice of history last year when she became the first woman to officiate in Australia's Matador Cup, standing as third umpire for Queensland v Cricket Australia XI in October 2015.

The World T20 2016 could only feature seven venues – Chennai the famous MA Chidambaram stadium is left out, with the 3 locked stands being cited as reason.  However, it is one of the venues for Women T20 WC.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

## that list of Sind and …  are some of the teams which had participated in Ranji but are defunct now !