CSK Players in Ranji Trophy 2026-27: Groups, Who Will Be Available and Last Season's Numbers

Hello Yellow Army!

Update, 11 October (Round 1): Dube and Samson were on India duty and not part of Round 1, Rahul Chahar was not named in Rajasthan's team, Ramakrishna Ghosh was not named in Maharashtra's team, Prashant Veer did not make Uttar Pradesh's playing XI, and Shreyas Gopal was left out of Karnataka's XI because of dehydration. Read how the others started in our Round 1, Day 1 report our Day 2 report and our Day 3 report.

So the Irani Cup just got over, and Rest of India beat the Ranji champions J&K by 167 runs in Srinagar. J&K were chasing 279 and got bowled out for just 111, mostly because of Mukesh Kumar's 6/33. And with the bat, Smaran Ravichandran scored 68 and 135 and took Player of the Match.

Our own Mukesh Choudhary was in that team too and picked up 5 wickets in the first innings (you can also see his full Irani Cup update on the Super Kings Player Tracker), so good to see him perform in red ball cricket as well.

Now the real thing begins, because the Ranji Trophy 2026-27 first class cricket championship starts tomorrow, 11 October. Round 1 is a four-day game for every team representing all states of India, and our CSK boys will also be participating from various team spread all over the country.

Counting the names we have, 14 CSK players are in their state squads. One big name is missing, though: Ruturaj Gaikwad has not been named in the Maharashtra team, as he is busy with the ongoing India A series against Australia A. A few of the others might not be available for every round because they are busy with national or India A duty, but they are in the squad and could turn up at a later stage. Here is the full list, and then I will take you through what each one did last season.

The 14 CSK players in Ranji Trophy squads

Ruturaj Gaikwad is not in this list because he is not in Maharashtra's team for now. More on that below.

How the Ranji Trophy works this season (and where our boys are)

Let me give you a quick format check first of Ranji Trophy. The Elite teams are split into four groups, and everyone plays each other once inside their group, so that is seven matches in the three groups with eight teams and six in Group D, which has seven. The top two from each group go to the quarter-finals. Then there is the Plate group too, with six teams (Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh). Their matches are mostly in October and November, the top four go to the semi-finals, and the two finalists get promoted to the Elite division next season. None of our CSK players are in it, so we are only following the Elite side. This is how the Elite season is set up:

• Phase one: 11 October to 5 November 2026
• Phase two: from 17 January 2027 to 4 February
• Quarter-finals: 9 to 13 February
• Semi-finals: 18 to 22 February
• Final: 27 February to 3 March

Now the fun part, which is where our players will be representing:

• Group C (4 players): Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat are all here, along with Bengal, Delhi, Jharkhand, Services and Odisha. So Mukesh and Ghosh (Maharashtra), Samson (Kerala) and Urvil (Gujarat) could end up playing against each other. Ruturaj would have been the fifth, but he is not named for Maharashtra at the moment.
• Group D (7 players): Mumbai (Mhatre, Sarfaraz, Dube), Rajasthan (Kartik and Rahul Chahar), Haryana (Kamboj) and Tamil Nadu (Gurjapneet) are all in the same group. So there is a real chance of Kartik facing Kamboj, or Gurjapneet bowling to Sarfaraz and Mhatre. Proper CSK vs CSK stuff.
• Group A (2 players): Prashant Veer with Uttar Pradesh and Aman Hakim Khan with Puducherry, in a group that also has the defending champions J&K, plus Vidarbha, Baroda, Madhya Pradesh, Goa and Bihar.
• Group B (1 player): Shreyas Gopal with Karnataka, along with Andhra, Saurashtra, Hyderabad, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Tripura and Assam.

Round 1 is a four-day game, and 19 matches start in the first four days. Defending champions J&K open against Madhya Pradesh in Srinagar, Karnataka play Andhra, and Bengal take on Delhi. Out of our boys, Mumbai's group has the most CSK names, so we will keep an eye on their match.

Who might miss games?

Alongside domestic, senior and international series are also lined up. So some of these names will be wearing India colours soon. Here is what we know for now:

• Sanju Samson and Shivam Dube were not named for Round 1 as they were on India duty for the T20Is, and they are also in the India T20I squad for the New Zealand tour, with the five T20Is running from 22 October to 1 November.
• Ruturaj Gaikwad is not named in Maharashtra's Ranji team because he is busy with the ongoing India A series against Australia A.
• Gurjapneet Singh is also in an India A squad, so he might miss some of Tamil Nadu's early games.
• Mukesh Choudhary and Anshul Kamboj are in the India A squad, which plays three multi-day matches against New Zealand A starting 24 October.

We covered Samson, Dube, Mukesh and Kamboj (not Gurjapneet) in our India and India A squads for the New Zealand tour article. The ODI and Test squads are not announced yet, so more names could be added. Round 1 was played while Samson and Dube were with the India team, so we may see them for their states only in later rounds, when they are free.

Who should be available from the start?

Now the other side of it. As of now none of these eight has any national or India A call-up, and most of them should be available for their states in the league phase, though a few did not make the Round 1 XI (see the update above):

• Ayush Mhatre (Mumbai): he was out with the hamstring injury that ended his IPL 2026, but he is fit again and playing matches, scoring 25 off 15 for Sainath CC in the Kanga League. Mumbai have also named him vice-captain for the season, and they open against Chandigarh at the Wankhede on 11 October.
• Sarfaraz Khan (Mumbai): he was just in the Irani Cup for Rest of India, with 45 off 97 in the first innings and a duck in the second. So he is match-ready and will want a big score back in Mumbai colours.
• Shreyas Gopal (Karnataka): he has been busy since IPL 2026. As we covered in our CSK Squad Update, he led Coastal Kings Mangaluru in the Maharaja Trophy T20 and took 13 wickets in 11 innings. So he is in good rhythm, and he is not in any national squad.
• Rahul Chahar (Rajasthan): he was playing county cricket in England, and in the same CSK Squad Update we noted his six-wicket haul (22-4-80-6) for Surrey against Essex. He has no India call-up either, but he was not named in Rajasthan's team for Round 1, so we will have to wait for a later round.
• Ramakrishna Ghosh (Maharashtra), the doubtful one: he fractured his right foot on his IPL debut on 2 May, which ended his season after just one game. He is reportedly bowling again and training at the CSK camp in Chennai, though that is from practice videos and not an official statement. He was not named in Maharashtra's team for Round 1, so we will have to wait and see when he gets a game. But when he does play, it would be a good start after the injury, a chance to get proper match practice and fit into competitive cricket before the next IPL.
• Kartik Sharma (Rajasthan), Urvil Patel (Gujarat) and Aman Hakim Khan (Puducherry): none of them is in the India or India A squads we know about, so their states should have them for the whole phase one.

One name you will not see in our list is Khaleel Ahmed. He is a Rajasthan player, but he has not been named in their Ranji squad. He is still at the CSK camp in Chennai working on his fitness after the quadriceps tear that needed surgery, as we covered in our CSK Squad Update. You can follow him on the Super Kings Player Tracker too.

One small thing: this is based on the squads announced so far. The state teams can still make their own selection calls, and if any national squad is added later, I will update this.

Last season's Ranji numbers, player by player

If you're interested, let's just take a peek at past performances of each player especially in 2025-26 Ranji Trophy.

Mumbai

Ayush Mhatre broke into first-class cricket in 2024-25 and hit his maiden century, a 176 against Maharashtra, in only his third first-class game. Since then he has led India at the U-19 World Cup and hit a record-breaking 110 off 53 in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy against Vidarbha.

But last Ranji season was a tough one for him. He started with 28 and 13, and then Ajinkya Rahane came in to replace him for the next few matches. He came back as an opener against Puducherry and made 35, but he was dropped again for the rest of the group matches and for the quarter-final too, where Mumbai lost to Karnataka. So it was just 76 runs in 3 innings. His overall first-class record is 660 runs in 13 matches at an average of 30, with two hundreds and two fifties.

Now Mhatre is fit and named vice-captain, so it is a big chance for him to put last season behind him and show what he can do in a four-day game after all that T20 and white-ball cricket.

Sarfaraz Khan who is domestic stalwart, last Ranji season did not start with a bang though, with scores of 42, 32, 1, 15, 5*, 16 and 67. Then came the monster in January 2026, a 227 off 219 balls against Hyderabad, which won him Man of the Match and was his fifth first-class double century and his 17th first-class hundred. He followed it with a 24, and then missed the quarter-final. Those scores add up to 429 runs in 9 innings - a decent season. Overall he has 5,114 first-class runs at an average of 64.73, with a best of 301 not out.

Shivam Dube missed Mumbai's 2025-26 season opener with back stiffness as a precaution, because he was already part of India's T20I squad. In Mumbai's title-winning run in the 2023-24 season, he scored two centuries and took 12 wickets at an average of 12.08, so when he does play Ranji, he delivers all round performance for team. But for this season, he might miss Round 1 as he is regularly travelling with Indian national team.

Maharashtra

Ruturaj Gaikwad started last season by rescuing Maharashtra with a 91 off 151 balls against Kerala after they were 5 for 4. He also made an unbeaten 55 in the second innings, and the match ended in a draw. Then in the next game he scored a hundred, 116 off 163 balls against Chandigarh, plus an unbeaten 36 in the second innings, and was named Player of the Match as Maharashtra won by 144 runs. After that he missed a few matches, then came back with 66 against Goa. In the last group match he made 46 and 0, and Maharashtra could not qualify for the knockouts. He finished the season with 410 runs in 7 innings - another decent season.

But he is not in Maharashtra's Ranji team this time. Since IPL 2026 he has been regularly playing for India A, and he is busy with the ongoing India A series against Australia A and has also been called up for the Indian ODI team. So there is no Ruturaj in Round 1, and we will have to see if he turns up for Maharashtra at a later stage.

Mukesh Choudhary had a quiet season overall. He took 2 wickets in the season opener, then 4 for 34 in 19 overs against Chandigarh last October. After that came 1 wicket in a first innings, 2 wickets in the next match, and then 3 and 3 wickets against Karnataka in a drawn game. He could not play the rest of the matches, so it was not a great season for him. He has just come off a five-wicket haul in the Irani Cup for Rest of India, so a good domestic season is surely expected from him this time with much improved bowling.

Ramakrishna Ghosh had a decent season with both bat and ball for Maharashtra. With the bat he chipped in with a few useful scores of 31, 31, 36 and 32, and with the ball he picked up 4 wickets in the second innings against Chandigarh and finished strongly with a 5-wicket haul against Madhya Pradesh in the last group match. We need to see how he goes this season, especially after coming back from the injury he got in the IPL, and whether he will even be in the playing XI or not.

Uttar Pradesh

Prashant Veer is the one of the player to watch for this season. He got only one Ranji match for Uttar Pradesh last season, and he did not make much of an impact with either bat or ball. He also had a shoulder injury in the Ranji game against Jharkhand in January, a grade-2 tear that kept him out for at least three weeks. So at first-class level he has played very little. But his white-ball and age-group numbers are strong: he was Player of the Tournament in the U-23 State A Trophy with 376 runs at an average of 94 and 18 wickets in seven matches.

More recently he also did well with bat and ball in the UP T20 League, where, as we covered in our CSK Squad Update, he was Noida Super Kings' top run-scorer with 245 runs at an average of 40.83 and a strike rate above 160. So we need to see how much confidence he has gained from that to perform in domestic red-ball cricket.

Karnataka

Shreyas Gopal did not get a chance to play for CSK this season, but he was the story of the Ranji Trophy last year. He was the Karnataka bowler of the season and taken 17 wickets in his first four games, before ending the campaign with 48 wickets in 19 innings, as Karnataka reached the final. Along with a ball, he used bat as well to score 459 runs in 16 innings with 5 fifties. It was an outstanding season with both bat and ball for him and the team. For a leg-spinner who has been waiting for his chance at CSK, another good domestic season can really put him up in the playing xi selection radar.

Rajasthan

Kartik Sharma got very few games for Rajasthan last season, but he made the most of them. He scored 331 runs in 6 innings, with a century against Mumbai, 139 off 192, and another one against Delhi in November, 120 off 154 balls with nine fours and five sixes. He also hit 16 sixes in those six innings - one of the reason CSK paid ₹14.2 crore for him at the IPL auction. After all the attention he got and the good performances in IPL 2026, it will be interesting to see how he builds on that in red-ball cricket this season.

Rahul Chahar is a leg-spinner with 101 first-class wickets in 27 matches, best figures of 8 for 51, and he even took 10 wickets on his County Championship debut for Surrey. But last Ranji season was not a good one for him. He played very few matches and took only 1 wicket and 3 wickets in the games he got, so he will want to do much better this time and shine to attract attention again. He is already in contention for a place in CSK's playing XI, and a good Ranji season can only strengthen that case.

Gujarat

Urvil Patel hit an unbeaten 109 off 124 balls against Bengal at Eden Gardens chasing 327, the only Gujarat batter to put up a real fight against an attack with Mohammed Shami and Akash Deep. He also scored 64 against Railways in January. Overall he scored 414 runs in 11 innings, with scores like 58, 48 and 44 along the way. It was quite a good season, but he got a lot of starts that he could not turn into a big total. Remember, this is the same man who hit the fastest fifty in CSK history. Now he needs to show that he can play long innings as well, not just quick-fire ones, and do better than last season.

Puducherry

Aman Hakim Khan is the lesser-known name in our list, an all-rounder who had a good season for Puducherry. He scored 455 runs in 11 innings, with a 118 off 87 balls with ten sixes against Rajasthan and an 86 among a few other good innings. He also bowled long spells, 21 overs against Mumbai. He is not getting chances at CSK for now, so he will be looking to do even better this season and put his name forward.

Haryana

Anshul Kamboj did not have a great Ranji season last time, with 13 wickets in 9 innings. But remember this is the man who took all 10 wickets for 49 runs against Kerala, one of the best bowling figures in the history of the tournament. Last season he also topped the Duleep Trophy with 16 wickets in three matches and took 21 wickets in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Add to this his ODI debut, and with regular domestic cricket this year and the India call-up, he can definitely do better. With India A duty also coming up, Haryana may not get him for every game, but whenever he turns up, he should be one of the bowlers to watch.

Kerala

Sanju Samson returned to Kerala's Ranji side last season right after the Asia Cup and made a 54 off 63 balls against Maharashtra when Kerala were 35 for 3, in the season opener. After that he left for India's T20I tour of Australia, so we did not see much more of him. He has 3,888 first-class runs in 66 matches. With his T20I commitments, we may not see him for all of Kerala's games, but he has shown that he is keen to turn out whenever he is free.

Tamil Nadu

Gurjapneet Singh, the left-arm pacer, played for Tamil Nadu last season after taking 13 wickets in four matches in his first season of Ranji. His first-class record is 33 wickets in 9 matches at an average of 22.06, with a best of 6 for 22. Last Ranji season he played the first 2 matches, taking 4 wickets and 4 wickets, then missed the next 3 and came back for 1 and 1 wicket. So it was only a few games, but a decent performance. He is in an India A squad now, so Tamil Nadu may have to manage without him early on.

He got chances at CSK this year, and he has done well in the TNPL too, with 15 wickets at an average of 14.1 in TNPL 2023. Competition for pace bowling spots at CSK is already getting tough, with Kamboj, Mukesh, Khaleel, Spencer and Nathan around, so this season is a good chance for him to build up his profile even more.

So this was it all about Ranji Trophy and CSK player. I will be adding match-by-match updates for every CSK player in the competition on the Super Kings Player Tracker, so please keep an eye on it.

Round 1 reports:

• Round 1, Day 1: How did our CSK players start?
• Round 1, Day 2: A quiet day for our CSK players
• Round 1, Day 3: Urvil's 85, Kamboj's tight spell and bad news on Mhatre

Stay healthy stay yellow.