From a breath taking season in 2019, the ninth edition of the only global cricket tournament for university students, Red Bull Campus Cricket kicked off in India across several cities with city qualifiers in February to discover and nurture budding cricketers from college campuses. The Indian Premier League franchise Rajasthan Royals deepens their association with the energy drink giant Red Bull in India and plans to continue scouting talent from the annual international T20 tournament for college cricket teams – Red Bull Campus Cricket.
Red Bull Campus Cricket 2020 city qualifiers took place this year across 29 cities in India Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Indore, Pune, Nagpur, Goa, Raipur & Rajkot in the West; Jalandhar, Dehradun, Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Meerut and Dharamshala in the North; Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Mysore and Vizag in South; and Tripura, Guwahati, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Patna and Jamshedpur in the East. Tripura & Rajkot are the two new cities that have been added for this edition and are a part of the East and West Zones respectively. This year, RBCC found their Kochi city champions through their association with Kerala College Premier League T20 Championship in February.
After the city rounds and the city eliminators, Indore and Nagpur city champions played each other in Indore on 18thNovember 2020 where DAVV College Indore beat Hislop College Indore and qualified for National Finals. New LJ College from Ahmedabad won the other regional final in the West and qualified for the national finals.
DAVV College Indore beat Hislop College Indore by 111 runs. BIT College Patna won the toss and chose to bowl first. Match Scorecard: Hislop College Won the toss and choose to bowl first. Karan Tahilyani from DAVV College Indore won man of the match award for scoring 49 runs in 38 balls which included 3 fours and 2 sixes. He also picked up 1 wicket in his 4 overs.
Top two teams from each zone will compete in the National finals, where the teams will play in the knockout rounds of quarterfinals, semifinals and finals respectively.
The National winner will then represent India in the Red Bull Campus Cricket World Series Championship 2020. Past winners from India that have gone on to represent the country at the World Championships are Rizvi College, Mumbai; DAV College, Chandigarh; Swami Shraddhanand College, Delhi; and MMC College, Pune.
352 colleges across 30 cities in India competed for the national championship of Red Bull Campus Cricket 2019. Last year, DAV College Chandigarh team beat Hindustan College Chennai team in an exciting low scoring final to emerge the India Champions of the prestigious T20 tournament.
Last year, the unique partnership between the Rajasthan Royals and Red Bull marked the beginning of one of India’s biggest cricket talent hunts as the former scouted young talent during the tournament and at the RBCC National Finals 2019. A team from Rajasthan Royals closely monitored and picked key players and gave them the spectacular opportunity to be a part of the trials conducted by the team along with the possibility of getting picked in the next IPL auctions. RBCC Player Tryouts with Rajasthan Royals took place at Institute of Sports, Talegaon, Nagpur in the first week of December of 2019. The 4 selected RBCC players were Sushant Singh from Ranchi, Faizam Alam from Delhi, Manik Sirohi from Delhi and Sharukh Khan from Chennai (Man of the Red Bull Campus Cricket 2019 tournament in India – From Hindustan College Chennai) who also became a part of the IPL auction but was unsold but got noticed because of his name. Zubin Bharucha (Rajasthan Royals Head of Cricket) & Romi Bhinder (one of the directors of the RSDMF and also the media and Team manager of Rajasthan Royals) were present to interact with the players during the trials.
