Rajneesh Gurbani followed up his stupendous feats in the Ranji Trophy knockouts — a 12-wicket haul in the semifinals and a hat-trick in the final — with a four-wicket effort against Rest of India to practically ensure the Irani Cup title for Vidarbha at the VCA stadium here on Saturday.
As if Apoorv Wankhede’s onslaught on the fourth morning and the subsequent declaration of Vidarbha’s first innings at a monumental 800 for seven was not enough, Gurbani’s inspired spells early on took the wind out of RoI’s resistance.
RoI was tottering at 98 for six before G. Hanuma Vihari and Jayant Yadav brought some solace to the RoI camp with an unbroken 138-run partnership at stumps.
As such RoI may not be able to stretch the game into the reserved sixth day — in case the first innings doesn’t end in five. With a need for someone to drop anchor, RoI preferred to open the innings with R. Samarth along side Prithvi Shaw.
But the ploy didn’t work as Samarth ballooned an attempted flick off Gurbani to square-leg off the second ball he faced.
In came Mayank Agarwal but the in-form opener nicked Umesh Yadav soon afterwards to R. Sanjay at first slip.
Shaw entertained a sparse crowd with his delightful strokeplay. While his twin flicks off Umesh drew applause, his backfoot punches off Gurbani and Aditya Thakare left the two national selectors watching the game spellbound. Just before lunch, Aditya Sarwate’s left-arm spin was introduced and Shaw welcomed him with consecutive square-cut boundaries and a slog-sweep over the mid-wicket fence.
However, moments after completing his 50 after lunch, Shaw played a loose cut off Thakare and Wankhede pouched the catch off the second attempt at backward point.
Gurbani then struck thrice in 11 balls. He first got skipper Karun Nair to edge one to the ’keeper, then shaped a ball in to sound the timber as K.S. Bharat shouldered arms and in the next over, got R. Ashwin to offer catching practice to Faiz Fazal in the cordon.
Had umpire Anil Chaudhary not turned down a caught-behind appeal against Vihari off Umesh — the ball had kissed the gloves en route to ’keeper Wadkar down the legside — RoI’s fate would have been worse.
The scores: Vidarbha — 1st innings: Faiz Fazal c Saini b Ashwin 89, R. Sanjay c Samarth b Jayant 53, Wasim Jaffer b Kaul 286, Ganesh Satish c Bharat b Kaul 120, Apoorv Wankhede (not out) 157, Akshay Wadkar c Bharat b Nadeem 37, Aditya Sarwate st Bharat b Agarwal 18, Aditya Wakhare c & b Vihari 0, Rajneesh Gurbani (not out) 22; Extras (b-9, lb-7, nb-1, w-1): 18; Total (for seven wkts. decl. in 226.3 overs): 800.
Fall of wickets: 1-101, 2-218, 3-507, 4-600, 5-691.
Rest of India bowling: Navdeep Saini 36-8-123-0, Siddharth Kaul 36-7-91-2, R. Ashwin 43.3-2-129-1, Shahbaz Nadeem 46-5-160-1, Jayant Yadav 48-3-202-1, R. Samarth 5-0-26-0, Hanuma Vihari 8-0-32-1, Mayank Agarwal 4-0-21-1.
Rest of India — 1st innings: Prithvi Shaw c Wankhede b Thakare 51, R. Samarth c Sarwate b Gurbani 0, Mayank Agarwal c Sanjay b Umesh 11, Karun Nair c Wadkar b Gurbani 21, G. Hanuma Vihari (batting) 81, K.S. Bharat b Gurbani 0, R Ashwin c Fazal b Gurbani 8, Jayant Yadav (batting) 62; Extras (lb-2): 2; Total (for six wkts. in 77 overs): 236.
Fall of wickets: 1-4, 2-21, 3-77, 4-90, 5-90, 6-98.
Vidarbha bowling: Umesh Yadav 14-2-45-1, Rajneesh Gurbani 13-2-46-4, Aditya Thakare 11-4-35-1, Aditya Sarwate 20-5-55-0, Akshay Wakhare 18-3-42-0, R. Sanjay 1-0-11-0.
