Virat Kohli Last Played Ranji Trophy In 2012, Sachin Tendulkar In 2013: Stat Gets More Glaring After NZ Loss

The gruelling Test tour of South Africa had finished in early January of 2007 and towards the end of that month, India were playing West Indies in a bilateral ODI series as a tune-up to the 50-over World Cup set to be played in the Caribbean in a month and a half's time. India played four ODIs on January 21, 24, 27 and 31 at Nagpur, Chennai, Cuttack and Vadodara. On February 1, four members of that team -- Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar and Sourav Ganguly were all taking a flight from Vadodara to Mumbai.

Reason? Mumbai was playing Ranji Trophy final against Bengal from February 2-6 and none of them wanted to miss the prestige battle. Tendulkar scored a hundred, Ganguly scored 90 and Zaheer took a bagful of wickets.

Within 48 hours of that Ranji Trophy final, Tendulkar, Ganguly, and Zaheer had to play an ODI international series against Sri Lanka. "Workload management" was yet to become a talking point at that time.

The Indian team that was blanked 0-3 by New Zealand at home on Sunday had seniors who were exempted from playing Duleep Trophy despite having a decent break after the the T20 World Cup with only a three-match ODI series against Sri Lanka in the interim.

Save Jasprit Bumrah, whose injury-prone body and exceptional skills demand workload management, questions are noe being raised as to why the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja opted out of Duleep Trophy.

"In gruelling heat of second week of April, in the year 2000, he played Ranji Trophy semi-final for Mumbai against Tamil Nadu and scored a double hundred in a first innings chase of nearly 500," former India opener Devang Gandhi, who had been a national selector between 2017 to 2021, recalled while talking to PTI.

"In