Delhi face Mumbai, Shaw challenge
BENGALURU: Delhi will have to be at their best to upstage the mighty Mumbai when the traditional domestic powerhouses square off in the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy here on Saturday.
Both teams have their bases covered though Delhi have an upper hand in the pace department with Navdeep Saini and Kulwant Khejroliya doing the job for the team in helpful conditions at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
Mumbai, on the other hand, have a star-studded batting line-up comprising Ajinkya Rahane, Prithivi Shaw and in-form captain Shreyas Iyer.
With the firepower they possess, Mumbai should not miss the services of Rohit Sharma, who played the quarter-finals and semi-finals before joining the India ODI squad ahead of the West Indies series beginning on Sunday.
Mumbai, who have won the tournament twice since it became a pan-india affair, have cruised into the final having thrashed Bihar and Hyderabad in the quarters and semi-final respectively.
Pacers Dhawal Kulkarni and Tushar Deshpande have delivered in crunch moments and so has young left-arm spinner Shams Mulani, who is Mumbai’s leading wicket-taker in the tournament with 16 scalps.
Shreyas Iyer has led from the front, amassing 366 runs at an average of 122, including two hundreds and a fifty.
Shaw, who turned heads with special performances in his debut Test series against West Indies, made his presence felt in the four games he has played so far, scoring 348 runs at an average of 87, including a quickfire 61 in the semi-final.
However, it will be a test for them against Saini and Khejroliya.
Both the Delhi pacers as well as the rest of the team will be fired up for the final, considering they came out of nowhere to beat Jharkhand in the second semi-final.
The side led by Gautam Gambhir — second-highest scorer with 517 runs — was on the brink of defeat before Pawan Negi, batting at No 9, played a sensible knock under pressure to take Delhi over the line in the last over.