What Subramaniam Badrinath has not done successfully in key opportunities, Abhinav Mukund has begun to achieve. His unbeaten 86 not out following a score of 46 in the first innings and his century partnership with his state partner M. Vijay has put Rest of India in a strong position. Hearty congratulations to him and best wishes to carry on to make a well deserved hundred.
Mumbai blew a big opportunity to take the initiative away from the Rest by batting poorly in response to a low first ininings total set by ROI. ROI’s strong batting lineup came up croppers as they scored on 260 runs in the first innings thanks largely to an inspired spell of bowling by Ajit Agarkar. Ravindra Jadeja continued his good form with the bat while the rest barring Mukund failed. Mumbai’s workhorse, Wasim Jaffer, continued to make major contributions domestically while Rohit Sharma had a forgettable return to the game. Munaf Patel manages to keep the selectors continually interested by picking up wickets in crucial games as he did so in this one with a five wicket haul.
ROI should go on and set a huge target for Mumbai making it difficult for the Ranji champions to succeed. Having said that, Rohit Sharma is a big match player and may very well take up the challenge and score big. All in all, an interesting couple of days ahead as we kick off the domestic season.
– Srikanth
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Srikanth, I know we can go back and forth about Badri 🙂 But he did skipper the Indians to victory in the Emerging players tournament and scored two 90s in the two innings he played in the Corporate Cup tournament.
He did skipper the Indians but his contribution was hardly earth shattering, Virat Kohli scored and found his way into the Indian side. I would place as much importance on the corporate cup as I would in TNCA 1st division.
Also, I like Mukund as well…but let’s give him a sustained run as well as opportunities to establish himself (unlike Badri)…before hyping him up. It’s too early to be singing his praises, in my opinion. He is a superb talent…but he’s only played 16 FC games…
I’m afraid he might get hyped just as Rohit Sharma has been (though Mukund atleast has the scores to show in those 16 games unlike Rohit)…
Srikanth, as you point out…the importance of tournaments is subjective…based on individual opinions. But a person can only score given the opportunities. Similarly, I can feel that the Irani cup has really lost the glory it used to have (when it unearthing the likes of Srikkanth, Vengsarkar etc) as have some other domestic tounaments as well. But it’s highly subjective, again. And on skippering, there is some credit due for winning. Even in this game, Sehwag has been off the field during the entire Mumbai innings and Badri has been marshalling the ROI team.
At the end of the day, I do not believe that the treatment to Badrinath has necessarily been unfair. Could he have benefited from the luck that folks like Yusuf Pathan have, maybe. Unless he does something dramatically different, I fear he is going to end up the same way T. E. Srinivasan did.
Srikanth, that’s your opinion and I respect it. I feel he could have been given a sustained run at the national level and certainly a place in the test match team (perhaps in lieu of Yuvraj).
Also, I agree with you, his career is going nowhere and he might end up like TE…but where I differ is that I’m not sure what else he has to do to show that he belongs.
We can respectfully agree to disagree and move on 🙂
TE he was given one chance to face Sir Richard Hadlee and then unceremoniously dropped for ever.
Wasim Jaffer must be the modern day Ashok Mankad. Jaffer seems like Bradman (big scores) in Ranji / Irani trophies, but never able to perform outside India.
Abhinav has now included in one of the teams for the Challenger series after Sachin has withdrawn.
Finally, here we have proof that IPL can convert an average player into a match winning player–alas, it is not an Indian but an Aussie, in Shane watson.
Abhinav scores a hundred in the Challenger Trophy as well. All this should bode well for him in the near future.
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