Ranji Trophy: Mumbai draws after Hooda's hundred

Mumbai opted to play it safe on the final day and the drawn match gave it three points while Baroda earned one.

Deepak Hooda completed his fifth first-class century before Baroda declared.

Baroda presented Mumbai a tough target of 366 runs, a slender chance to itself of forcing an outright victory in 80 overs at the Palam ground here on Sunday. Mumbai opted to play it safe and the drawn match gave it three points while Baroda earned one.

Resuming at 321 for five, Baroda added 62 runs in eight overs this morning with Deepak Hooda, 66 overnight, completing his fifth century in first-class cricket. His unbeaten hundred, carved off 103 balls, contained nine fours while Swapnil Singh contributed 33 in their undefeated 75 runs partnership for the sixth wicket.

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Mumbai adopted the prudent approach by batting out the remaining period, thanks to a half century by skipper Aditya Tare (63 not out off 162 balls with nine fours). Jay Bista and Shreyas Iyer were the other batsmen to ensure there were no alarms in Mumbai’s effort to collect three points from the match.

Baroda captain lamented, “It would have been nice if we got those five wickets, too, but I think the bowlers tried hard on a track that offered us little help. We bowled some no balls – and even had a catch taken off one. Our batsmen should have kicked on to big scores on the first day after getting a start. But overall, we take a lot of positives from the game.”

Irfan noted, “The ball was turning only from the rough and even that was very slow. There was not much for the spinners despite the pitch looking as if it had cracks and there was some rough to exploit. Once the ball got softer and when Mumbai decided not to go for the chase, it became tough for us to secure a breakthrough.”

Mumbai coach Chandrakant Pandit was satisfied. “I’m happy that (Aditya) Tare and (Abhishek) Nayar showed the temperament to have batted nearly 40 overs under pressure. Our plans to chase the target hinged on us getting a (substantial) good start. It is a big relief that we got three points.”

Pandit felt, “We need to put of lot of hard work to be able to take 20 wickets on different surfaces. Akhil (Herwardkar) applied himself in the first innings with his century. (Balwinder Singh) Sandhu got us to the lead from nowhere. We don’t want to put pressure on any one batsman (Nayar) to bail us out every time.”