Mumbai’s quest for regaining the Ranji Trophy title came to a premature end on Sunday after a mauling by Karnataka in the quarterfinal. The writing on the wall was clear in the first hour of the match when R. Vinay Kumar exposed the Mumbai’s batting line-up with a hat-trick across his first two overs. It was the tale of Mumbai’s whole season — a season that never really began.
Ever since the season-opener, where a second-string Mumbai chased down a sizeable Madhya Pradesh total for an innings lead, the new team could never get the combination and balance right. The problems with availability of the big players continued till its very last match, where in a knock-out match, Mumbai was forced to hand debut to two bowlers.
That Mumbai ended up using 21 players over seven matches — only two of whom featured in all the games — was a testimony to the fact that the team never had the core combination in place. The pace department struggled first with Dhawal Kulkarni and Shardul Thakur’s selection and then injuries to Thakur and Royston Dias at the crunch time. Spin, on on other hand, continued to be Mumbai’s headache as none of the three spinners tried out looked like running through a side.
The batting department, in such case, was expected to make up for the bowling deficiencies. Instead, a majority of the batsmen failed to fire. Siddhesh Lad (652 runs from 12 innings) and Prithvi Shaw (537 from 12) were the only ones who crossed the 500-run mark. But that they lie at No. 6 and 16, respectively, in the list of season’s top run-getters indicate the lack of consistency. The biggest disappointment turned out to be the form — or the lack of it — of seniors Suryakumar Yadav (460 from 12) and captain Aditya Tare (237 from 11). “If at all you want to blame the batsmen, it has to be Surya and I,” said Tare.
Poor catching also continued to haunt Mumbai. At least 15 catches would have been put down, including some key players like Naman Ojha in the opener and C.M. Gautam in the quarterfinal just to cite an example.
The Mumbai cricket fraternity, however, feels the campaign is anything but a failure. The selectors and the team management need to be complemented for their brave calls. A lot of hue and cry was made over Abhishek Nayar’s exclusion ahead of the last league game. That Nayar looked out of sorts for the whole season coupled with the fact that Akash Parkar and Shivam Dube are ready-made replacements for the veteran all-rounder is a sound-enough argument to have in favour of his omission from the team.
That the selection panel led by Ajit Agarkar, in consultation with coach Sameer Dighe and capain Aditya Tare, chose to look for options beyond the veteran hints at their plan for future.
It is time to take tougher calls for the limited overs’ leg. With Tare, who now has gone two seasons without a hundred, finding it difficult to wear the multiple hats, perhaps it’s time to try out a new captain for the Zonal Twenty20s next month.
