Mumbai march into Ranji final, face MP
BENGALURU: Domestic giants Mumbai completed the formality of qualifying for the Ranji Trophy final by virtue of first innings lead on the final day of their last-four match against Uttar Pradesh here on Saturday.
The 41-time champions, Mumbai thoroughly dominated from the first ball of the game, which ended in a draw, at the Just Cricket Academy ground.
Mumbai had posted 393 in their first innings and then bundled out Uttar Pradesh for a meagre 180 to gain a massive first innings lead.
When play ended on the fourth day on Friday, Mumbai had piled up a mammoth 449/4 in their second essay, courtesy hundreds by Yashasvi Jaiswal and Armaan Jaffer.
At stumps of Day 4, Mumbai took an overall lead of 662 runs, making it amply clear that there was only one result possible from the match. On Saturday, play began after lunch due to wet outfield and overnight batters Sarfaraz Khan and Shams Mulani continued to torment the UP bowlers.
Both Sarfaraz (59 not out) and Mulani (51 not out) completed their half-centuries, after which both the captains decided to shake hands. Mumbai posted 533/4 in their second essay.
Sarfaraz hit one boundary and three sixes while Mulani hammered six fours. Mumbai will meet Madhya Pradesh in the final, which will be played at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium from June 22. The final will be a battle between two former Mumbai players Amol Mazumdar and Chandrakant Pandit, who are coaches of Mumbai and MP respectively.
Kartikeya takes five
Bengal needed 350 runs to win a tough semi-final but left-arm spinner Kumar Kartikeya bowled out an under-pressure
team to exactly half of the target to take Madhya Pradesh to Ranji Trophy final after 23 years.
Kartikeya, who has been impressive in an otherwise disastrous IPL campaign for Mumbai Indians, bowled 32 overs out of the 65.2 overs that Bengal faced to make 175. His final figures read 32-10-67-5 for a match
haul of 8/128. It wasn’t the defeat that will hurt Bengal but the manner in which they lost would hurt them the most. It was an abject surrender. Kartikeya actually played with the opposition batters’ minds and even their top-scoring skipper, Abhimanyu Easwaran (78), looked beaten from the start.