Slow and steady wins the race.. but not in the case of Vidarbha as they still have a mountain to climb on the final day of the Ranji Trophy final against Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium.
The visiting team resumed their batting at 10/2 on Day 2 morning and they were 248/5 by the time the day ended. What transpired between these two score lines was just a show of sheer resilience and desperation from Vidarbha’s end to somehow survive the whole day without any major damage.
Vidarbha did a decent job of what they had planned and would have been a happier side had Karun Nair remained not out overnight. Karun played a splendid innings of 74 off 220 balls and was looking well set for a big one before Musheer Khan found an edge off his bat and sent him packing.
Vidarbha, for the better part of the second session, went into a shell where they didn’t even score a single boundary for 139 balls. This dry spell was faced by three batters, Karun, Aman Mokhade and Yash Rathod. It was the skipper Akshay Wadkar who came out and scored a boundary on his first delivery and ended that drought.
The skipper along with Karun, built a strong 90-run partnership in which the duo frustrated the home side by playing 173 balls before Karun got dismissed.
Akshay along with Harsh Dubey will resume the batting on day 5 of the Ranji final.
‘It’s a tough task’
So, is Vidarbha out of the game?
“I think we need to be realistic. It’s a tough task,” Karun Nair told the media after the end of the day’s play.
“But if I can say something about this team, it’s that they never give up and they show character each time that they are put down. Being realistic, I would say it’s a tough task, but it’s cricket. You never know what can happen. I would have loved to be batting overnight and then could have given you a better answer if I was batting,” Karun Nair said.
What was Vidarbha’s Plan?
Vidarbha are chasing a mammoth target of 538 in the fourth innings, something that has never been done before. Karun explained what was the team’s plan to approach this target.
“We had two days to bat and the plan was to bat session by session and make it as small a target as possible, and not think about the big target. Keep batting for 1 hour or half an hour and break it down as much as you want,” Karun said.
“Since we had two days and so much time to think about, we just couldn’t think about the bigger picture. We just had to think about small targets and keep batting and take it to the last day and see where it goes after that,” he added.
The India Dream
Karun Nair, who scored a triple-century against England in 2016, still believes that he can make a comeback to the team.
“Hundred per cent I think I can come back otherwise I wouldn’t be giving my all to play domestic cricket. So hundred per cent I feel I can play for India again. It’s just about putting up the performances and keeping the consistency,” said Nair.
Mumbai’s one hand is already on their 42nd Ranji Trophy title but can Vidarbha pull off a miracle out of nowhere on the final day of the Ranji Trophy Final?
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