Ranji Trophy 2017: Seminal show takes Vidarbha to a historic semi-final
Kerala tumbled from 137/3 to 165 all out as Vidarbha cantered home by 412 runs . Kerala tumbled from 137/3 to 165 all out as Vidarbha cantered home by 412 runs .
At THE drinks break of the second session on Day 5, the Vidarbha team got into an impromptu huddle near the pitch. The Kerala pair of Salman Nizar and Sachin Baby had just put on nearly 50 runs on the board and taken the score to 133/3. They were still 445 runs away from an impossible win and Vidarbha had sealed a historic semi-final spot already. But still there was a tinge of anxiety in the huddle.
They had already after all failed to achieve the first target set by their team management on Monday—for the last four wickets to score 100 runs and clinch a hypothetical knockout win. Now, Baby and Nizar were keeping them at bay from ticking off the second target, that of bowling out Kerala for within 150 in their second innings. It’s a practice that the Vidarbha players were used to from the pre-season camps itself, simulating match situations. To the extent like Faiz Fazal reveals, “we did more match simulations than even nets at Jamtha before the season commenced.” And when they trudged back to the pavilion at lunch, coach Chandrakant Pandit had also scribbled a note for them on the white board, which he would later simply call “a harsh one”.
It’s not sure what was exactly said in that huddle either. It doesn’t matter really. For, what followed was a dramatic turn of events. A match that seemed well and truly headed towards a farcical draw didn’t just come to life but exploded into thrill-a-minute action as the Vidarbha spinners run roughshod. Kerala lost their next five wickets for six runs in the space of 38 balls. Pacer Rajneesh Gurbani started it off by removing Baby before left-arm spinner Aditya Sarvate took over, snaring four wickets in 11 balls. Veteran Rohan Prem and the last two wickets did drag the score past 150 before being bowled out for 165, giving Vidarbha a massive 412-run victory and a first-ever spot in the last-four stage of the Ranji.
Sarvate continued his rout, adding another two victims to finish with figures of 6/41, his best figures in first-class cricket, bringing a shambolic end to what had been Kerala’s most successful Ranji season ever. Vidarbha had already amassed a lead of over 500 runs by the end of Day 4, and when their overnight batsmen resumed their innings there were fears they were taking the easy way out by pummelling the Kerala bowlers into further submission—like Bengal would do to Gujarat in Jaipur taking a lead of 827 runs and not declaring. It would made some sense too in their case, considering they’d lost fast bowler Lalit Yadav after just bowling 5 overs in the first innings.
But both Pandit and Fazal insisted that an outright win was what they’d been aiming for despite letting their second innings carry on till an hour before lunch on the final day. “I could sense that they were a little relaxed the previous night considering we had more or less already booked our semis. So I gave them some straight talk this morning and put it across that we had to have the win-at-all-costs mentality if we had to brace up for the tougher challenges ahead,” said Pandit. Eventually, he was proven right, as Vidarbha raced to their fifth win in seven matches this season,.
It’s an outlook change that Fazal, who’s spent more than 10 years in the Vidarbha dressing-room and seen them grow from also-rans to the team of the 2017-18 season, puts his team’s unprecedented success down to.
There was another huddle they got in to at the start of the season. It was in their opening match against Punjab. The fast bowling trio of Gurbani, Yadav and Siddhesh Neral had blown away a power-packed Punjab batting line-up for 161 at Mohali. The onus was now on their batsmen to brace up against a new-ball attack with three fast bowlers who’d all played for India at some point.
At 129/3 with Fazal and Wasim Jaffer dismissed, it looked like they would live up to their reputation of being a team that perennially flies under the radar and fail to take the initiative against a strong opponent. It was Vidarbha’s moment of reckoning. Ganesh Satish with Sanjay Ramaswamy turned it into a seminal one adding 278 for the fourth wicket. They amassed 505 and bowled out Punjab for 227 to win by an innings and 117 runs. The belief now changed from standing up to the big boys to going all the way and beyond. The belief came through in Surat as wel,l as they came from being 95/6 in their first innings to winning by over 400 runs eventually. “Punjab game changed everything. We suddenly had the kind of confidence I’d never seen in a Vidarbha dressing-room. Nobody was simply talking about qualifying for the knockouts. The only target was winning the Ranji Trophy,” says Fazal.
Akhsay Karnewar, the ambidextrous spinner, was the hero of the Punjab win but played only two more games. He had to make way for off-spinner Akshay Wakhare, who’s led the way with the ball with 29 wickets at 20.82.
“We brought in a system where no player was guaranteed a spot in the playing XI. They all had someone competing with them for their respective slot. That kept everyone on their toes and focused on the same goal,” said Pandit. Sarvate came in a little later into the season and presently sits with 25 wickets at 13.76. It was his first season after being called for chucking and remodelling his action. And it was only apt that his redemptive breakthrough should come on a day his team broke new barriers.
Brief scores: Vidarbha: 246 & 507/9 decl beat Kerala 176 & 165 (S Nizar 64, Aditya Sarwate 6/41) by 412 runs.
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