Data check: Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy dominance explained in four charts

India’s most successful domestic cricket team will play its 500th Ranji Trophy match on Thursday.

Mumbai has produced some of the sport’s greatest talents like Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Polly Umrigar, Vinod Kambli, Wasim Jaffer and more recently Ajinkya Rahane. As a team, they hold the most enviable records at the Ranji Trophy and since 1934 have lost only 26 matches.

They’ve drawn 231 and won 242 matches.

The biggest casualty of their dominance has been the Saurashtra team who have never won a single Ranji match against Mumbai despite 54 attempts.

Their biggest opponents, Gujarat, Baroda and Maharastra have all played 62 matches against Mumbai. None have them have registered more than four wins.

Largely, their dominance can be attributed to a perennially talented batting line up that has produced India’s best batsmen.

Three seasons by Mumbai batsmen truly stand out. Rusi Modi in 1944, Wasim Jaffer in 2008 and Shreyas Iyer in 2015.

Modi was the first batsman to score more than a thousands in a season, a record that remained unbroken till 1988 when Tamil Nadu batsman Woorkeri Raman inched past. But Modi’s season is arguably the greatest piece of batting prowess at the tournament. He played only five matches, the lowest among all batsman who’ve scored more than thousand runs scoring at an average of nearly 202.

Perhaps only VVS Laxman’s 1999 season is a close rival. He scored nearly 1,500 runs in nine matches at an average of 109.

Jaffer and Iyer too had record breaking seasons. To date, Iyer is only second to Laxman for runs scored a single season. Jaffer’s 2008 saw four centuries including a triple century against a strong Saurashtra team. The Mumbai opener (who now plays for Vidharbha) is the most decorated Ranji Trophy batsman in history with over 10,000 runs and 32 centuries.

Mumbai’s batting prowess has also enabled it to pile on the runs. In the 499 games they’ve played, they’ve scored 500 runs or more a staggering 109 times. This effectively puts the game out of reach for most of their opponents.

This run scoring habit is a winning formula because Mumbai’s Ranji team is alarmingly successful. They’ve been in 46 Ranji finals and have won the tournament 41 times. Their closest competitor Karnataka have taken home the trophy only eight times.

Between 1959 to 1977, they won 18 out of 19 Ranji trophys, 15 in succession. Perhaps their most prosperous period as a team.

So as Mumbai steps out to play its 500th Ranji match, the weight of history is upon them. Playing Baroda, a team that has won four Ranji matches against Mumbai—the highest number of wins tied with Tamil Nadu, their toughest test is probably yet to come.