Captain Swain rallies his troops as Services strike
It baked for two full days and an additional session under a warm winter sun spiced up with a chilly breeze before allowing play in the Ranji Trophy semifinal to resume, but the pitch continued to slumber as the Services set off in chase of Mumbai’s first innings total of 454/8 declared at the Palam ground here on Sunday.
Having been rolled thoroughly and with no action taking place at all after the gale and rain on Thursday night, the track was almost as good as a first-day surface and Mumbai’s bowlers struggled to extract anything of note from it.
At close, the hosts had moved to 164/3, skipper Sowmya Swain (64, 171m, 122b, 7x4) and Yashpal Singh (43, 112m, 69b, 6x4) holding fort as Mumbai captain Ajit Agarkar threw as many as six bowlers at them. The fourth wicket partnership is already worth 92 runs, leaving Mumbai to defend 290 runs on the added-on final day’s play on Monday.
Mumbai had tasted early success with the wickets of openers Nakul Verma and Pratik Desai, but were then stymied as the Services’ two best batsmen dug in to pull the game into the sixth day.
With the outfield at its verdant — and quickest — best, the two took heavy toll of anything wayward from the Mumbai bowlers. Before they came together, onedrop man Anshul Gupta (31, 71b, 5x4) had helped his captain put on 50 runs for the third wicket, the stand ending when Gupta drove loosely at medium pacer Shardul Thakur to be taken in the slips.
As the evening deepened, the conditions were at their best for batting and Swain was all over the bowlers. Blessed with quick feet, he cut and drove in authoritative fashion and in doing so, set up a nice platform for his team’s push towards the Mumbai total on the morrow even though it is still a mountain of runs away.
Earlier, Mumbai’s batsmen scored at a quick clip in order to maximise time for their attack to get at the Services lineup when play resumed in the post-lunch session. In all, close to 250 overs were lost between poor light, foggy conditions and Thursday’s storm.