Mumbai skipper Aditya Tare attributes batting failures to himself and Suryakumar Yadav as domestic giants lick their wounds post Karnataka loss
It has been a season that Mumbai skipper Aditya Tare and Co would want to quickly forget. Dropped catches proved costly for them in their Ranji Trophy final last season at Indore which resulted in Gujarat winning the title. This season again, it looked like Mumbai did not learn anything from their past experience. They dropped 16 catches in seven games. Apart from their fielding woes, nobody took responsibility of scoring consistently for Mumbai, who have certainly not lived up to their domestic giants tag this season.
Mumbai skipper Aditya Tare (centre) with Dhawal Kulkarni (left) and Siddhesh Lad at the Wankhede Stadium last month. The hosts drew v Baroda in their 500th Ranji Trophy match. Pic/SURESH KARKERA
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Siddhesh Lad is the only batsman in this season's top 10 run-scorers. He scored 652 from seven games with two centuries at an average of 59.27. Apart from Akhil Herwadkar's (224 from four games at an average of 32) failure as a batsman, it was the captain and vice-captain pair of Aditya Tare and Suryakumar Yadav, who not only disappointed the selectors, but Mumbai's cricketing fraternity as well.
Wasted experience
Experienced campaigner Yadav (460 runs) managed to score only one century in his seven matches at an average of 38.33, while Tare had only 237 runs to his credit from six games with an average of 23.70 which included three fifties. Looking back on a disastrous season, Tare accepted his failure. "If I want to stress on one factor that has been the cause of our failure, it will be Surya's and my form in the middle order. Lad did his part, but the two senior-most batsmen in the squad did not turn up. If at all you want to blame the batsmen, it has to be Surya and me throughout the season," Tare said.The absence of Shreyas Iyer (321 runs in four games) and Ajinkya Rahane (94 runs in two games) did affect Mumbai's performance.
Suryakumar
Sunil More, a member of the selection committee, who was present at the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) Stadium to witness Mumbai's debacle, was furious with Mumbai batsmen's approach during the match. "I am going to speak to our chairman Ajit (Agarkar) on how we should strengthen our middle order. We need to be more competitive. We have to make sure that we have a strong player in our bench strength for every position. We missed out on this factor this time," More said yesterday.
Careless decisions
Mumbai's bowling department was weakened with the absence of injured pacers Shardul Thakur and Royston Dias, but who's to blame for not providing adequate game time to pacers Shivam Dube and Shivam Malhotra? It was surprising to see the duo being handed caps in the crucial quarter-final against Karnataka without playing either of them in the league games. Till halfway into the season, left-arm spinner Vijay Gohil (14 wickets from four games) was the team's main spinner. However, his counterpart Karsh Kothari's (eight wickets from three matches) entry into the side changed the equation. Tare heaped praise on Kothari's bowling capabilities. "Karsh has the ability. He has been quite consistent in the games he played but he is quite young. Spinners need time at the first-class level. They need to play two to three seasons to be good match-winning bowlers for us," Tare added.
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