Maharashtra's Swapnil Gugale & Ankit Bawane put on 594 for the third wicket to break Indian domestic partnership mark, but were unaware of being 30 runs shy of world record held by Sri Lanka’s Jayawardene and Sangakkara
Maharashtra's Ankit Bawane (left) congratulates his captain Swapnil Gugale on his triple century against Delhi in the Ranji Trophy game at Wankhede Stadium yesterday
Swapnil Gugale and Ankit Bawane of Maharashtra fell 30 runs short of the highest first-class partnership for any wicket on Day Two of the Ranji Trophy match against Delhi at the Wankhede in Mumbai yesterday.
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The record for the highest wicket partnership in first- class cricket currently belongs to Mahela Jayawardene (374) and Kumar Sangakkara (287), who put on 624 runs for the third wicket on Day Three of the first Test against South Africa in Colombo way back in 2009.
12-hour vigil
Gugale and Bawane batted together for close to 12 hours and put on the highest partnership in the Ranji Trophy, surpassing Vijay Hazare and Gul Mohammad’s 577 for Baroda against Holkar in the 1946-47 final.
Yesterday, Gugale, captaining Maharashtra for the first time, remained not out on 351 and put on 594 runs for the third wicket with Bawane, who too remained not out after a marathon 258. Maharashtra declared their first innings closed at 635-2 after batting for 173 overs. At close, Delhi were 21-0 after batting for five overs. Neither Gugale nor Bawane had any clue that they were so close to a milestone while they were at it. “We had a plan of scoring 600-plus runs and declaring. We had to give them a certain amount of overs and time to play today. That was the only thing in our minds, not records,” Gugale told reporters yesterday.
“In fact, we learnt about all the records that were broken and that we were so close to another world record only when we returned to the dressing room. The only record that I had some idea about was the highest partnership in Ranji Trophy and that too because somebody mentioned it,” Gugale added.
Bawane said that he just wanted to score a hundred at the historic venue. What followed was just magical. “After I got that hundred I carried on as the track was very good for batting,” said Bawane. He knew exactly what the Delhi players must have felt about the run riot.
“We were in a similar situation when Abhinav Mukund and Murali Vijay, opening the batting for Tamil Nadu, put on 462 runs for the first wicket during the 2008-09 season. I played in that match and I know how frustrating and tiring it can be,” said Bawane.
Gugale and Bawane played 1021 balls between them, which in terms of overs meant approximately 171.
“In the middle of some friendly banter, they (Delhi players) used to come and say, ‘We are tired bowling at you, aren’t you guys tired of batting for so long?’ and we used to laugh and say, ‘Does anybody gets tired of batting?’ ”Bawane remarked.
Lone risky shot
The only risky shot that Bawane played was a reverse sweep to a spinner towards the end of day’s play. “I did that because we needed some quick runs and the field was spread out. The way we were batting, we could have easily carried on for the next two-three days,” added Bawane.
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