Bowlers a let-down as Mumbai fail to win outright again

MUMBAI: An unbeaten 131-run stand between Madhya Pradesh No 4 Aditya Shrivastava and legspinner Mihir Hirwani for the seventh wicket, chasing 408, prevented Mumbai yet again from registering an outright win in their last Ranji Trophy tie here. Madhya Pradesh’s lower-order resistance, summed up Mumbai’s dismal season where they finished 13th of the 18 elite teams in Group A-B, with only one win against their name.

After being in a spot of bother at 44 for two overnight, Madhya Pradesh just lost one wicket in the morning session. But getting three wickets in a heap in the post-lunch session may have raised hopes in the Mumbai dressing-room that they could pull off a win. However, their bowlers lost steam and ran out of ideas as soon as the opposing batsmen showed fight and a partnership took shape.

Except a brave spell by leftarmer Royston Dias, in the final session, where he resorted to round-the -wicket short ball tactics, Mumbai never looked like breaking through. Shrivastava, was dropped at 128 in the deepsquare leg boundary, and there were some other tense moments too for MP batsmen against Dias, but no other Mumbai bowler looked like picking up a wicket.

Failure of seasoned batsmen in the first half of the season was only part of the reason why Mumbai couldn’t enforce outright wins. The limitations of the bowling attack, let them down big time. Captain Aditya Tare admits the bowlers failed, but shields them for their inexperience. “We just managed 20 wickets in the first match. It’s a big failure of this season. We are missing out on experience,” he said. But Tare wants them to be given a longer rope, saying ‘that’s how we will be