Hyderabad Wins the Ranji Trophy Plate Final!

 It was part of our mission - to bring back Hyderabad to the Ranji Trophy Elite group after it had been relegated to the Plate. For those who are unfamiliar with the jargon here's the explanation - of the 38 teams in the Ranji Trophy, 32 belong to the Elite group, and 6 belong to the Plate group. Every year two teams from the Elite are relegated to the Plate while two teams from the Plate get promoted to the Elite.

Team Hyderabad
Sitting L to R : Krishna Reddy (Video analyst), Budhi Rahul, Sai Pragnay Reddy, Tanmay Agarwal, Abhishek Murugan, Kartikeya Kak, T Ravi Teja, Tanay Thyagarajan, Chandan Sahani, Rahul Singh (V Captain), Nitesh Kannala, G Ganesh, Sajid (Masseur), DB Ravi Teja (Coach)

Standing L to R: Santosh (Physio), Tilak Varma (Captain), CV Milind, Rohit Rayudu, E Sanketh, Rishab Baslas, Sagar Chaurasia, TP Anirudh, Me (Selector), Saketh Sairam, T Pavan Kumar (Asst Coach), Ronald Rodrigues (Fielding Coach), Subhash Patro (Trainer), Jyothi Shetty (Selector), Riazuddin (Selector), Jaggu Lal (Manager)  

Last year Hyderabad ended up 37 out of 38 teams and was relegated to Plate. This means we had to play with new and young teams such as Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim and end up in the top two to qualify for the Elite group.

And we did it in style - thanks to heroics from captain Tilak Varma, Tanmay Agarwal, Rahul Singh, Rohit Rayudu, Nitesh Kannala and Sai Pragnay Reddy and bowling heroics from Tanay Thyagarajan, CV Milind and others. All games were won outright, most were completed in two days and almost all were innings wins.

Something to cheer about certainly and definitely something to build upon.

Well done team Hyderabad!