FOR many years, the traditional winter occupation for a county cricketer has been to play club cricket in Australia or South Africa, but more recently increasing numbers of English players have been travelling to India to work on their games.

Few, however, have gone so far as Vikram Solanki and Kabir Ali, who are to play first-class cricket for Rajasthan in the Ranji Trophy.

On Thursday, when England begin their defence of the Ashes in Brisbane, the Worcestershire pair will be making their first appearance for Rajasthan in a four-day match against Gujarat in Ahmedabad.

Both Solanki and Ali played for England’s one-day side in a warm-up match against a Rajasthan President’s XI in India in March and initial contacts were made after the game. For Solanki, the move will be a return to familiar territory as he was born in Udaipur, in Rajasthan, and lived there until he was 8.

Few English cricketers have played in the Ranji Trophy. Before independence was achieved in 1947, a few English players were engaged by Indian teams, including Denis Compton, who made an unbeaten 249 in the 1945 Ranji Trophy final for Holkar against Bombay. More recently Nayan Doshi, the Surrey left-arm spinner and son of Dilip, the former India bowler, grew up in England but played first-class cricket for Saurashtra before joining Surrey in 2004.

For all the influence of overseas players in county cricket, relatively few English players opt to spend their winters playing first-class cricket abroad. Ian Botham had one season with Queensland in 1987-88, reaching the final of the Sheffield Shield, but he had his contract terminated after he was charged with assaulting a passenger on a flight to the final in Perth.