The last time Mumbai had made it to the final of the domestic T20 was in its inaugural edition in 2007, when the tournament was not even named as the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Just when it had hopes of earning a slot in the final after such a long gap, thanks to three wickets in four balls in the penultimate over of its last Super League match against Baroda, tailender Bhargav Bhatt sent Mumbai crashing with a cracking drive that raced over mid-off’s head and bounced a couple of times before crossing the rope.
Thanks to its one-wicket win, Baroda pipped Mumbai and Kerala on the basis of net run rate and set up a final showdown against Uttar Pradesh.
Monday was dominated by permutations and combinations all through the day. After folding up Vidarbha for a paltry 105, Kerala was required to chase it down in a maximum of 15.1 overs to stake a claim for the final. Once the southern team failed to do it, the last game was going to be a virtual semifinal.
Mumbai started the game on a disappointing note, with in-form Shreyas Iyer and Aditya Tare throwing their wickets away, edging to Pinal Shah behind the wicket off Munaf Patel and Irfan Pathan, respectively.
However, Suryakumar Yadav’s maiden T20 fifty, the highlight of which was an upper cut off Hardik Pandya for a one-bounced boundary in the 15th over, took Mumbai past the 150-mark. It meant that Baroda had to cross Mumbai’s 151 in 19.1 overs to progress to its third T20 final.
Perfect start Dhawal Kulkarni gave Mumbai the perfect start, removing Kedar Devdhar off the first ball of the innings. Devdhar’s younger brother, Mrunal, then started the Baroda recovery before leggie Pravin Tambe foxed him with a wrong ‘un.
Deepak Hooda then took centrestage and played a perfect T20 innings. Despite Tambe getting through Pandya’s defence in the 11th over and Yusuf Pathan faltering yet again,
Hooda continued to garner boundaries at will. Just as Baroda was cruising towards the final, the tide turned in Mumbai’s favour with Hooda and skipper Irfan falling in the space of six balls.
Pinal Shah and Soaeb Tai then brought Mumbai back into the game with a quick-fire partnership. With nine runs required to win, Shah lofted Trivedi straight into Yadav’s hands at long-on.
The next ball, Tai swept from well outside off over square leg to give Baroda the advantage.
However, he mistimed a pull off the next ball to Iyer at mid-wicket and Bhargav Bhatt ran Rishi Arothe out in a desperate attempt to get the strike back. With three runs required off two balls to qualify, Bhatt took a calculated risk off a fuller-length ball. It worked wonderfully well for his team. While the left-hander will remember the drive and the wild celebrations that followed, the Mumbai players would like to forget it at the earliest before shifting their focus to the Ranji Trophy knockouts.
THE SCORES
Mumbai 151/5 in 20 overs (Suryakumar Yadav 57, Shashank Singh 25; Bhargav Bhatt 2/25) lost to Baroda 153/9 in 19 overs (Deepak Hooda 53, Hardik Pandya 28; Pravin Tambe 3/26, Dhawal Kulkarni 2/23, Sagar Trivedi 2/34).
Vidarbha 105 in 19.3 overs (Urvesh Patel 28; Nizar Niyas 3/14, U Manukrishnan 3/29, Fabid Ahmed 2/21) lost to Kerala 109/8 in 18.4 overs (Rohan Prem 34; Akshay Wakhare 3/26, Ravi Thakur 2/19).
