For teams in the Ranji Trophy, a good result against Mumbai provides a huge boost for the rest of the tournament and Tamil Nadu will hope to carry that momentum into the second half of the tournament starting against Odisha here on Thursday, after pocketing three crucial points against the 40-time champion.
While on paper, TN’s next three games, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Baroda, should be easy, the team finds itself in a tricky situation where it would at least need two outright wins to progress ahead.
TN was unlucky that its game against Tripura was affected by weather that cost the side a chance to pocket full points while Mumbai, MP and Andhra have all posted a win or two.
And it is something skipper Abhinav Mukund is quite aware but he hopes the momentum from the Mumbai game should help. “Beating Mumbai in Mumbai is obviously a big thing. We have built a fair bit of momentum and that will hold us in good stead.”
Tamil Nadu had a break in the last round and the team has had a chance to regroup especially with M. Vijay and R. Ashwin heading back to the national team.
It will be interesting to see if the team management sends Washington Sundar to open the innings or draft in a regular opener like V. Ganga Sridhar Raju.
Washington did well in the game against Tripura when he opened the innings smashing 159. This will allow the team to play B. Aparajith who scored a half-century and an unbeaten century in the second innings against Andhra. He missed the second game against Tripura due to India ‘A’ commitments but did not play against Mumbai and it could be toss up between Raju and Aparajith.
When it comes to bowling, the team will carefully assess the wicket before deciding if it wants to play an extra spinner in R. Malolan, who is handy with the bat lower down the order or go for the extra pacer in either L. Vignesh or V. Lakshman.
When asked about how vital it is to score an outright win here, Abhinav said, “You can’t go into a match thinking it is a full points game. Also this is the first time we are playing a six-match Ranji Trophy so until the last game we can’t predict how many points will be needed. But when the opportunity is there, we should cash in and pounce on the opponents.”
The teams :
Tamil Nadu : Abhinav Mukund (Capt.), B. Indrajith (vc), M. Kaushik Gandhi, B. Aparajith, Vijay Shankar, N. Jagadeesan (wk), M.S. Washington Sundar, R. Sai Kishore, Rahil S. Shah, K. Vignesh, V. Yo Mahesh, L. Vignesh, R. Rohith (wk), V. Ganga Sridhar Raju, Malolan Rangarajan, V. Lakshman
Odisha : Sandeep Pattanaik, Natraj Behera, Santanu Mishra, Govinda Poddar (Capt.), Subhranshu Senapati, Biplab Samantaray, Rajesh Dhuper (wk), Dhiraj Singh, Basant Mohanty (vc), Suryakant Pradha, Alok Sahoo, Alok Mangaraj, Deepak Behera, Ranjit Singh, Abinash Saha.
