The second round of the 2026-27 Ranji Trophy produced a mix of big hundreds and bowling spells, with two days of play completed in most of the matches by 19 October. Rajat Patidar made an unbeaten 107 for Madhya Pradesh against Puducherry, Rinku Singh was unbeaten on 118 for Uttar Pradesh against Goa, and Uday Saharan scored 161 for Punjab against Chhattisgarh. Rajasthan made 497 against Railways, with Sachin Yadav and Karan Lamba both scoring 194, while Haryana beat Chandigarh by an innings and 24 runs. The round followed several large scores of the first week and gave an early picture of the groups.
The argument that batters dominated the round is easy to support. Madhya Pradesh were 302 for 5 against Puducherry’s 177, with Patidar’s hundred and Gaurav Yadav’s 5 for 70 giving them a lead of 125. Punjab scored 456 against Chhattisgarh, with Salil Arora also making 107 alongside Saharan’s 161, and Baroda scored 416 against Bihar, with Priyanshu Moliya making 132 and Deepak Hooda 70. Karnataka’s Manvanth Kumar scored a maiden first-class hundred, 135, against Saurashtra, and Maharashtra’s Digvijay Patil (148) and Ankit Bawne (120 not out) took them to 403 for 5 against Jharkhand. Kerala made 404 with Mohammed Azharuddeen scoring 139 and Sachin Baby 112, and in the Plate Group Sikkim reached 477 for 4 against Arunachal Pradesh with hundreds from Parth Palawat (151) and Nilesh Lamichaney (134).
The counter-argument is that the bowlers had their say. In Services against Bengal, 30 wickets fell in two days, and Rahul Singh took five for 39. Harpreet Brar took 5 for 21 for Punjab, as Chhattisgarh slumped to 72 for 5, and Zeeshan Ansari took 5 for 45 as Goa were bowled out for 164 against Uttar Pradesh. Tanay Thyagarajan took five wickets in the Hyderabad and Andhra match for the second innings in a row, and Mohit Thakur took 3 for 6 in Tripura’s game. Haryana’s Nishant Sindhu scored 92 and then took 6 for 27 to bowl Chandigarh out for 118 in the second innings, so the match ended inside two days.
Vidarbha were 253 for 7 against Jammu and Kashmir’s 260, with Ravikumar Samarth unbeaten on 133, and Tamil Nadu’s Pradosh Ranjan Paul made 136 in a score of 313 against Uttarakhand’s 134. Assam made 334 against Tripura, who were 143 for 5 following on and 62 in their first innings, and Manipur were 173 for 2 against Meghalaya’s 380. The round matters because the Ranji Trophy is where selectors look for performances, and the first two weeks have shown players from the full range of teams doing well. Patidar and Rinku Singh are established names, while Manvanth Kumar and Parth Palawat show how many young batters are making their mark. The contrast between flat pitches in some venues and bowler-friendly conditions in others will also shape which teams qualify, since points depend on first-innings leads.
The second round showed a competition in good health, with batters making large scores and bowlers making match-defining spells. The next rounds will show which teams can sustain it.
Featured image: A Ranji Trophy match in Shillong, 2024-25 (file photo). Photo: Tungtap, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.