Mumbai demolished a rather defensive Uttar Pradesh in the finals of India’s premier tournament, the Ranji trophy, to clinch the title for a record 38th time. What had begun as a match-up between a very strong-looking and a red-hot favourite team – to bring the trophy home – and a team that had managed to edge past their opponents to the quarter-finals, semi-final and the final, fast turned out to be a further widening of gap between them and culminated into a 243-run loss for the Mohammad Kaif-led Uttar Pradesh team.
The start of play had seen Kaif in an early spot of bother, when he managed to call it right at the toss and would have been left in a catch-22 situation with the decision he needed to make. Usually, captains prefer to bat first in a high-pressure final like this; especially so against a team like Mumbai which has the all-round depth in their bowling department to make it doubly stiff for their opponents in the fourth inning of a five-day match. However, this was one of the very few pitches one has seen in this season which had its share of greenery – not one to excite those with a bovine bent of mind – and with a bowling attack that comprised of Zaheer Khan, Dhawal Kulkarni and Ajit Agarkar, it would have befuddled the Kaif-clan. In the end, Kaif decided to take the softer option and a rather timid one of fielding first. 
This is not to say that the decision backfired as soon as it was taken as the first couple of sessions belonged the UP bowlers in general, and a medium pacer, Bhuvnesh Kumar in particular. Landing the ball in areas that are better known as the corridors of uncertainty, he distributed this confusion in almost every batsman’s mind and in the process reducing the 37-time champions to an unprecedented 55/4. Wasim Jaffer, the previous match’s triple centurion, Ajinkya Rahane, the 1000 plus run-getter in this season’s tournament and the great Sachin Tnedulkar were all back in the hut, with the little master been dismissed for his first ever duck in Ranji trophy cricket.
But that was the last of the upper hand that UP had in the match. Known for an attitude that is best known as ‘Khadoos’ in Mumbai circles, meaning ‘not budging an inch’, the Mumbai team clawed back through a chancy century from Rohit Sharma and an inning of great substance by the all-rounder, Abhishek Nayar who was rather unlucky to be declared out on 99. With the batting team getting to a 400-plus score, UP knew that they had their work cut out. For them to have any chance of clawing back into the championship reckoning, they would have had to get out of the mindset that besieges most of the teams when they are up against a much stronger team, and that is of defence and playing second fiddle.
Unfortunately, two soft dismissals very early on put UP on the backfoot, and in order to recover, the batsmen to play themselves out of the hole. The excruciatingly slow batting on the second day – 91 in 47 overs – had UP in a spot of trouble, but tragedy stuck when Kaif was given out to jolt the team back from the recovery process. After that it was a lone hand of Shivkant Shukla – who joined Nayar as a 99 scorer – that added a semblance of fight to the deflated team’s morale but could only come second to a Zaheer Khan spell that left them mesmerised. Bowling with the second new ball, he ensured that the red cherry spoke more than the mouth, it swung more, cut more and seamed more than the UP novices would have ever imagined in their life. 
Mumbai’s lead of more than 150 runs by the time their opponents had collapsed would have been enough to shut the oppositions out, but Mumbai probably had their eye on an outright win, and their batsmen came out with all their guns blazing. Due credit must be afforded to Mohammad Kaif as well, for getting the fielders in attacking positions – which leaked the runs – but it all seemed to be too little too late. Mumbai openers Wasim Jaffer and Vinayak Samant piled on the agony, as Samant got to his maiden first class hundred at the age of 36!
Samant’s late cut shots had the bowlers pulling their hair out in hordes – and putting the fielders in equally humongous numbers in the slips too – but failed to garner that nick that would have gone to the fielders’ hands. In fact, so close were the fielders to the bowlers of the pace of Praveen Kumar that one could have been forgiven for mistaking them to be standing for spinners. By the time Samant did guide one to the fielder’s hand, Rohit Sharma had taken over the run-scoring mantle – scoring another hundred and becoming only the fifth to do it twice in a Ranji final – and setting UP a target of 525 runs for an outright win.
That happening on the last day of an Indian pitch was as probable as George Bush spening his post-retirement days in the country of Iraq. Mumbai had done it again!