It was indeed a historic moment for the Madhya Pradesh cricket team as they won their maiden title in the final of the Ranji Trophy 2021-22 by defeating 41-time champions Mumbai by 6 wickets. But for their head coach, Chandrakant Pandit, it was an emotional moment that took him back 23 years, when he himself was the captain.
In the 1998–99 season, Pandit led MP made it to the final and faced Karnataka at the same venue – M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. But unfortunately, they lost the game by 98 runs. Since then, Madhya Pradesh never made it to the finals until Pandit returned as a coach and inspired a young group of players to script history.
Centuries from Yash Dubey, Shubham Sharma and Rajat Patidar registered a historic win in the first innings and after Mumbai were bowled out for 269 in the second innings of five days, Sharma and Patidar chased down 108 runs in 29.5 overs on Sunday. I helped them. Unforgettable day for Madhya Pradesh.
After the historic win, an emotional Pandit recalled the loss against Karnataka and said that they had some unfinished business at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
“It is a great memory that I left on this ground 23 years ago. I think it is all God’s blessing that we came back here and won this trophy which was fantastic,” MP head coach Chandrakant Pandit told Star Sports.
He said, ‘It is a little emotional because I missed this trophy when I was the captain of Madhya Pradesh at this ground. Some people say ‘father can’t do it but son does’, so Aditya Srivastava has done it in a great way.”
Before joining the MP cricket team as a coach, he had offers from other teams as well. But he chose it to finish the work he had left in 1998-99.
“I am always on the lookout for challenging jobs when the team is not doing very well. There are a lot of youth in the team and I probably want to develop that culture for a particular state. Especially regarding MP, I am interested in this. Played for the team for about 6 years.I knew the culture so did not turn down the offer that came to me in March.
“I had some offers but I decided to go back to Madhya Pradesh because I had left something 23 years ago and maybe, God was ready to bring me back to the same state. And by chance, it happened; Chinnaswamy is back at the stadium and playing the final,” he said.
Speaking about his way of coaching the MP team, he said, “Sometimes you feel there is a lot of talent and they need to develop that cricket culture. And whatever the sport demands, I try to incorporate them. ,
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