Ranji Trophy: Fighting fire with fire

Bengaluru, June 21

Mumbai will be looking to take home an unprecedented 42nd Ranji Trophy title but standing in their way is a determined Madhya Pradesh team with tricks of trade learnt from a Mumbaikar.

MP head coach Chandrakant Pandit won’t let his team settle for anything less than the title, but then again Amol Muzumdar’s men have dominated the proceedings since the start of the business end of the season.

On paper, Mumbai are overwhelming favourites to win the final match starting on Wednesday as they seem to have the best next-gen talent at their disposal.

Sarfaraz Khan, after a few indifferent seasons, has raised his game to the next level, scoring 800-plus runs in just five games. Yashasvi Jaiswal is one youngster who is as passionate about his red-ball performance as he is about donning the pink jersey for Rajasthan Royals. Three tons in four innings of the quarterfinals and semifinals showed his voracious appetite for runs.

Prithvi Shaw is another name who has a penchant for butchering any attack. Arman Jaffer is a chip of the old block, and it will be good for him if he could achieve even 50 per cent of what his illustrious uncle Wasim did. Add to it the likes of Suved Parkar or Hardik Tamore, and Mumbai have a batting line-up that can send shivers down anyone’s spine.

They have always had formidable batting line-ups, but this time the two underrated performers have been left-arm spinner Shams Mulani (37 wickets and 292 runs) and off-spinner Tanush Kotian (18 wickets and 236 runs).

On the other hand, MP are one of the most improved teams in the recent times. And under Pandit, they have inculcated a discipline that’s needed to reach the summit clash. Even without Venkatesh Iyer and Avesh Khan in their ranks, they have managed to do the job. — PTI

Shaw taking it easy ahead of final

Only three half-centuries in five Ranji Trophy games doesn’t match the lofty standards that he has set for himself but a pragmatic Mumbai captain Prithvi Shaw also knows that cricket is mirror image of life where the change in graph is the only constant thing. “I have scored a couple (three) of fifties but that’s not enough for me and no one even congratulated me after scoring a fifty and you feel bad as well,” he said. “In cricket and in life, the graph always goes up and down and it’s never going to always go up. So it’s just a matter of time that I middle those balls and get those big runs again.”