Akash Parkar (four for 56) brought Mumbai back with a marathon spell with the second new ball, Aditya Tare (63, 105b, 11x4) and Siddhesh Lad (70 n.o., 151b, 9x4, 1x6) built on it with the bat but a late surge of wickets ensured Maharashtra didn’t let the Ranji Trophy Elite Group A game drift in favour of the visiting team on Friday.
Mumbai finished the second day’s play at 196 for five, 156 runs behind Maharashtra’s 352. Despite the batsmen ruling the opening day’s proceedings at the Maharashtra Cricket Association stadium, Friday was quite the opposite, with 12 wickets falling for 245 runs. After erring in line and length on the first morning, Mumbai had handed Akash Parkar the new ball at the end of the day. With the red cherry barely five overs old, Parkar and Royston Dias started pitching the ball in the perfect channel Friday.
It worked as Jay Pande was bowled through the gate by Parkar in the fourth over. Parkar was again instrumental in the field with his rocket throw from deep on the off-side found Maharashtra captain Rahul Tripathi short of his crease by a whisker. That opened the floodgates and barring Satyajeet Bachhav, who was trapped in front of the wickets off the last ball before drinks, the Maharashtra lower order offered catching practice behind the stumps. Dias was rewarded with the last two scalps to wind up Maharashtra’s innings in the 23rd over of the morning for the addition of just 54 runs. Parkar’s figures on the morning read 10-3-23-4.
Opener Jay Bista started with a fling of fours but his cameo came to a halt with veteran Samad Fallah enticing him into a mistimed pull to mid-wicket with a 7-2 off-side field. Lad and Tare then played sensibly, the latter driving with aplomb. In the dying moments before tea, Lad had a lapse in concentration but debutant Ashay Palkar was deprived of a maiden wicket with Satyajeet Bachchav (square-leg) and Mukesh Choudhary (deep third-man) dropping him on 28 and 31, respectively, in Palkar’s consecutive overs.
But Palkar was rewarded after tea, soon after Tare missed a premeditated sweep off left-arm spinner Bachhav to end the 109-run association. The right-arm paceman got one to jag back in after Suryakumar Yadav had shouldered the balls to uproot the off-stump. Armaan Jaffer then offered a simple catch square of the wicket before offie Chirag Khurana set up in-form Shivam Dube by bowling wide of off-stump and enticing the burly hitter spool one to long-on and end the day well for Maharashtra.
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