The Madhya Pradesh (MP) cricket team created history on Sunday. Led by Aditya Srivastava, the team won their maiden Ranji Trophy title by defeating 41-time champions Mumbai by 6 wickets at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
This was MP’s first Ranji Trophy final in 23 years. In the 1998–99 season, they competed against Karnataka at the same venue, but lost the game by 96 runs. Chandrakant Pandit, who then led Madhya Pradesh, turned the fortunes of the team around as head coach, giving it a memorable win.
Chasing the target of 108 runs, wicketkeeper-batsman Himanshu Mantri scored 37 runs while Shubham Sharma scored 30 runs. Star batsman Rajat Patidar played an unbeaten innings of 31 runs to take the winning run to MP home.
MP vs MUM, Ranji Trophy 2021-22 Final Day 5 Highlights
Earlier on Sunday morning, Mumbai resumed their innings at 113/2 with Suved Parkar playing the anchor. But MP got a breakthrough as pacer Gaurav Yadav messed up the stumps of Armaan Jaffer with a slow delivery.
Meanwhile, the newcomer in Sarfaraz Khan played the spinners well and kept the scoreboard ticking. On the other hand, Parkar completed his half-century by hitting a four off Anubhav Agarwal.
But in the very next over, Parkar missed a flattering delivery from Karthikeya and lost his off-stump. Three balls later, Karthikeya had another wicket when Yashasvi Jaiswal delivered a wide slog to short third man.
Sarfaraz’s dismissal for 45 meant that he finished the season with 982 runs in nine innings at an average of 122.75. Karthikeya and Sahni wiped out the rest of the tail to give Madhya Pradesh a target of 108 for their maiden Ranji Trophy win.
Parth Sahni (2/43) and Kumar Karthikeya (4/98) shared six wickets between each other to bowl Mumbai out for 269.
If the bowlers accelerated MP’s win on Sunday, it was the batsmen who had laid the foundation with heavy innings the day before. Patidar scored his third century of Madhya Pradesh’s first innings on Saturday, after Yash Dubey and Shubham Sharma scored 133 and 116 respectively, followed by Saransh contributing with his maiden first-class half-century.
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