Ranji Trophy: Pace battery leads Vidarbha’s final charge

Nagpur, March 6

The pace bowling pair of Aditya Thakare and Yash Thakur battered the Madhya Pradesh tail as Vidarbha defeated their rivals by 62 runs today to set up a Ranji Trophy title clash with Mumbai.

MP, who were in a precarious position at stumps on Day 4 at 228/6 requiring 93 runs to win, withered in the face of hostile bowling from the duo who shared the spoils in the first session of the final day.

MP were finally bundled out for 258 in 81.3 overs, their hopes of entering the final for the third time dashed.

This is Vidarbha’s third Ranji final, and on both the occasions they have won the title, defeating Delhi (2017-18) and Saurashtra (2018-19), respectively.

Chasing a target of 321 for victory, MP were still in the match despite losing six wickets, but Thakare and Thakur made full use of early morning freshness of the wicket as they extracted a fair bit of bounce and movement.

Overnight batter Kumar Kartikeya, who had just taken guard when the stumps were called on Tuesday, fell for a duck, cleaned up by Thakare after facing just four balls.

Anubhav Agarwal was the next to depart, clean bowled for a duck by Thakare, leaving MP tottering at 234/8. Saransh Jain tried to keep the innings alive but could add just nine runs to his overnight score of 16 before Thakur sent his stumps flying to bring more joy to the Vidarbha camp.

Kulwant Khejroliya, too, went cheaply to signal celebrations in the Akshay Wadkar-led side.

Brief scores: Vidarbha: 170 & 402 in 101.3 overs (Rathod 141, Akshay Wadkar 77, Mokhade 59; Anubhav 5/92) vs MP: 252 and 258 in 81.3 overs (Dubey 94, Gawali 67; Thakur 3/60, Thakare 2/45).