Ranji Trophy, the domestic trophy that is going on since 1934 has incredible prestige in the cricketing fraternity. Winning this esteemed trophy is considered to be a massive achievement for any state team. Often good performers in Ranji move to the national side or become a hot property in the Indian T20 League.
When Rajat Patidar played a googly to cover point in the 30th over in Ranji Final on July 26th, all of Madhya Pradesh’s dreams appeared to come true. Chandrakant Pandit, MP’s coach could not hold back tears while all of MP’s players gathered around in the middle of the Chinnaswamy. Soon Patidar and captain Aditya Srivastava found themselves lifting each other in the air as Madhya Pradesh won the Ranji Trophy for the very first time.
Talking about the game, Mumbai started off very well with a 47 from captain Prithvi Shaw and 78 from Yashasvi Jaiswal. It was, however, Sarfaraz Khan’s 147, who contributed the most to Mumbai’s 374/10. What seemed like a good score was soon shown its place by three century knocks from the Madhya Pradesh side. Yash Dubey (133), Shubham Sharma (116) and Rajat Patidar (122) made a mockery of Mumbai’s total and took a lead of 162 runs.
At the end of the first innings, Mumbai were under pressure and that’s where they remained for the entirety of the match. With hopes of nullifying Madhya Pradesh’s lead, Mumbai started on a good start but could not build onto it. Suved Parkar (51) and Sarfaraz Khan (45) were the top scorers for the team. They however could only take a lead of 107 runs in their second innings.
The Madhya Pradesh team with just 108 runs and rain between their win, came out to bat on the fifth day of the match. Despite some hiccups at the start, captain Aditya Srivastava and Rajat Patidar took their team home and etched their names in the history books.
Sarfaraz Khan from Mumbai, with 982 runs in 9 innings was adjudged the man of the series.
