Ranji Trophy: Absorbing fifth day in offing

Rajkot: Tamil Nadu’s hopes of making it to the Ranji Trophy final have sprung back to life as brilliant hundreds from skipper Abhinav Mukund (122) and B. Indrajith (138) saw Tamil Nadu turning the heat on Mumbai here on Wednesday. After conceding a 101-run lead in the first innings, a desperate Tamil Nadu stepped on the accelerator and made 356/6 declared in their second essay, to set a challenging target of 251 for Mumbai.

An absorbing final day is in the offing at the SCA Stadium as Mumbai, who weathered the storm in the final 15 minutes of play to go 5/0 at stumps, need to chase down the remaining 246 runs or see through the day, for around 90 overs, to set up a final showdown with Gujarat.

The pitch, which has been of no assistance to the bowlers for four days, still looks in favour of the batsmen, but Tamil Nadu are pinning the hopes on their spinners Aushik Srinivas and B. Aparajith to put pressure on Mumbai.

Mumbai coach Chandrakant Pandit was confident that Mumbai batsmen would pull through on a wicket that hasn’t changed alarmingly. “For the entire penultimate day, we can take credit for just one wicket and the remaining five TN dismissals were a result of them going for runs. So we are confident that the wicket will behave the same way on Thursday,” said Pandit.

As Pandit also pointed out, the key aspect would be how Mumbai batsmen approach the crunch situation mentally. “Going by our past history, our batsmen have seen many situations like this and done well also,” he added.

As Mumbai had the advantage of taking the first innings lead, Tamil Nadu needed to make it big and that too with a good run-rate. It was the sterling partnership between Abhinav and Indrajith for the second wicket that fetched Tamil Nadu 185 runs at an excellent run-rate of around four per over. Indrajith, who was promoted ahead of the team’s regular no. 3 batsman Kaushik Gandhi, walked in with purpose at 64 for one and accelerated straightaway.

An elegant batsman, Indrajith was nimble on the feet against spinners and effortlessly found the gap through the packed off-side field. With both Abhinav and Indrajith going after the bowlers, Mumbai had no other choice than spread the field out. To make matters worse for Mumbai, a couple of opportunities went begging. When Abhinav was on 70, Aditya Tare missed a stumping and left-arm spinner Vijay Gohil dropped a return catch off the very next ball.

The session after the tea was the most entertaining. Dinesh Karthik, who walked in after Abhinav’s dismissal at 249 for two, was warned by the umpires for runnings on the danger area of the pitch. He fell after a handy cameo of 24 but the drama continued when Vijay Shankar joined Indrajith in the middle. Umpire Virender Sharma docked Tamil Nadu with five penalty runs — added to Mumbai’s first-innings total — when he found Vijay Shankar repeating the offence.

SCOREBOARD
Tamil Nadu (1st innings): 305
Mumbai (1st innings): 411
Tamil Nadu (2nd innings): V. Ganga Sridhar Raju lbw b Sandhu 28, A. Mukund c Shaw b Girap 122, B. Indrajith c Lad b Thakur 138, K. Karthik c Shaw b Sandhu 24, V. Shankar c & b Gohil 24, K.M. Gandhi (not out) 10, B. Aparajith st Tare b Gohil 2. Extras: (lb2, w3, nb3) 8. Total: (for 6 wickets decl. in 78 overs) 356.
FoW: 1-64, 2-249, 3-283, 4-330, 5-347, 6-356.
Bowling: Thakur 13-0-60-1, Sandhu 15-1-67-2, Nayar 7-1-32-0, Girap 15-2-62-1, Gohil 22-0-110-2, Lad 5-0-19-0, Shaw 1-0-4-0.
Mumbai (2nd innings): P.P. Shaw (batting) 2, P.G. Waghela (batting) 3. Total: (for no loss in 5 overs) 5.
Bowling: Aushik Srinivas 3-3-0-0, Natarajan 1-1-0-0, Aparajith 1-0-5-0.