MATCH STORIES
Follow UsIn the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, when Vidarbha went on to win the Ranji Trophy twice, they hardly had the services of Umesh Yadav. The greatest player to have come out of the stable, Yadav never tasted the beauty of stinging with the side and making his contribution count - something the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara and Jaydev Unadkat have done with Saurashtra quite frequently.
But as Faiz Fazal always maintained, the championship run in two consecutive editions was as much down to Umesh Yadav as it was because of Akshay Wadkar, Aditya Wakhare, Aditya Sarwate, and Rajneesh Gurbani. They had many players standing up to the occasion, but the intangibility of Yadav’s success story always kept them pumped up and a ready-made path to follow.
Finally, having Yadav streaming in with full energy for the 2023-24 season made things a lot better for Vidarbha’s chances - for there’s none better than him when it comes to delivering consistently high-quality spells in Indian conditions. In the final, on a dry Wankhede wicket and against a quality opponent like Mumbai, Yadav was not just going to be a trump card - he was holding all cards to drive an upset too.
Yet, as it turned out, Vidarbha had arguably the worst bowling day in the tournament, virtually gifting the trophy to Mumbai on a platter. After Prithvi Shaw and Bhupen Lalwani were dismissed cheaply, Ajinkya Rahane and Musheer Khan delivered a 130-run partnership for the fourth wicket before Shreyas Iyer batted the two-time champions out of the game. At the center of that disastrous bowling performance was Yadav.
Even though bowling on the channel has never been Umesh’s biggest strength, he has always found enough to play around with the surface. There has hardly been a better practitioner of reverse swing in India - and none has done so in such a consistent fashion. When Yash Thakur found enough reverse swing to keep the batters guessing, Yadav was landing one half-volley after another. He didn’t come close to bowling a wicket-taking delivery.
For Vidarbha, like their two previous championship wins, this season has also been about Aditya Sarwate and Aditya Thakare - as the duo combined to take 75 wickets at less than 20 runs per dismissal. They were unique in the way they operated and every time Vidarbha were threatened to be cornered by the opposition, the Adityas always cast their magic. In the second innings, they posed no threat and you combine that with Yadav’s performance, we had one of the dullest days in the history of Ranji Trophy final.
You would have to give it to rookie spinner Harsh Dubey for keeping a check in the run-flow and, at the same time, picking wickets consistently without any support from the other end. For that, he had to bowl more than twice the number of overs anyone else from his team did, but the lack of support meant the lead was already zoomed past 500.
Mumbai were without the services of many of their regular first-choice players, including Sarfaraz Khan, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Suryakumar Yadav - but the treatment they meted out was the embodiment of what has made them the most successful team in the history of first-class cricket.
The ability to bide time and then land a sucker punch is what defined Mumbai players and you wouldn’t find a lot of better examples than this one. Umesh Yadav learned that the hard way.
