Ayush Badoni hits unbeaten 210 against Jharkhand after 217 against Gujarat for a second straight Ranji double

Jharkhand batted for the last part of the day and were 131 for four at stumps on the second day, with Utkarsh Singh unbeaten on 53, so they trailed by 384 runs.

A season of runs

This is Delhi's third match of the season. Against Bengal in the opening game, Badoni made 23 and 85. Against Gujarat he made 217 off 246 balls. He has become the first batter in any of the Elite groups to go past 500 runs this season, and his average stands at 172, with an innings still to bat in the Jharkhand match.

His first-class record now stands at 2,426 runs in 42 innings at an average of 63.84, with six centuries and 11 fifties. His earlier double century came in the 2024-25 season, when he made an unbeaten 205 against Jharkhand at the Feroz Shah Kotla in his first match as captain, an innings that kept Delhi in the race for the quarter-finals at the time. The 217 against Gujarat beat that score.

The list he joins

Back-to-back double centuries in first-class cricket are rare. Badoni is the 21st Indian to do it. The list includes K.S. Ranjitsinhji, the Nawab of Pataudi, Vijay Merchant, Rusi Modi, Dilip Vengsarkar, Arun Lal, W.V. Raman, Surendra Bhave, Vinod Kambli, Pankaj Dharmani, Gautam Gambhir, Venugopal Rao, Sangram Singh, Paras Dogra, Virat Kohli, Milind Kumar, Sarfaraz Khan, N. Jagadeesan, Agni Chopra and Snehal Kauthankar. Ranjitsinhji and Merchant are the only two Indians to have done it twice, and Kohli did it in the 2017-18 season, while Gambhir did it in 2001-02.

Kohli and Gambhir are both former Delhi batters, which is why the comparison is being made. Snehal Kauthankar, who did it for Goa in 2024-25, was the first Goa batter to score two consecutive double centuries.

Despite the runs, Delhi are still looking for their first outright win of the season. A first-innings lead is already close to certain, but an outright win depends on Delhi bowling Jharkhand out, with two days of the four-day match still to play.

The 205 not out in November 2024 came in different circumstances. Delhi were struggling at 98 for four when he walked in, after Jharkhand had made 382. He hit 16 fours and 10 sixes, reached 200 in 216 balls and shared a stand of 150 with Sumit Mathur for the sixth wicket, which took Delhi to 388 for seven and past the Jharkhand total on first innings. That innings was his maiden double century and beat his earlier best of 191 against Hyderabad.

A double century in the Ranji Trophy is rare in a single season, and two in a row in the first three matches is rarer still. For the Delhi team it also changes the mood, because Badoni has led from the front in a season in which the team has yet to win.

Badoni has been in the Indian squad in the past year, before the selectors turned to Naman Dhir for the middle-order place. He recently played for North Zone in the Duleep Trophy. In India A, he is competing with Yash Rathod and R. Smaran for a middle-order position, and he also bowls off-spin. Scores of this kind in the Ranji Trophy are the way for a batter to keep his name in front of the selectors, and he will hope that the runs in this season turn into a call-up when the next squads are named.