It’s advantage Mumbai

MUMBAI: If you are one of those who wonder why teams make a huge fuss about ‘home advantage’ then all you need to do is drop into the Wankhede Stadium as Mumbai — who were bottom of the league before playing at home — drove home their advantage against Rajasthan in emphatic fashion at the Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday.

At close of play on Day Two of their Ranji Elite League ‘B’ tie, Mumbai had stretched their lead to 309 on the back of a classy 117 by Amol Muzumdar, a scintillating 86 off 91 balls including 12 fours and two sixes by Abhishek Nair and a gutsy 72 by Rohit Sharma.

Such was Mumbai’s dominance that by the end of the day, a few old-timers were heard saying, ‘This is how the Mumbai of old used to play.”

The day, however, did not begin on a very nice note for Mumbai as overnight batsman Hiken Shah was dismissed off the very first ball of the morning. But Mumbai showed that they were in no mood to relinquish the advantage.

Muzumdar seemed content to keep his wicket intact early on and Sharma started to find his touch at the other.

The runs after the initial lull started to flow but then the 19-year-old, who had been stretching his back almost throughout his innings, had to retire with his personal score on 41 because of back spasms after hitting a six and a four in succession off Rahul Kanwat.

“It was like a bolt from the blue. He wasn’t carrying the injury,” said Muzumdar later.

Mumbai had pushed their score to 184 — already 29 runs ahead of Rajasthan’s first innings total of 155. But with Sharma immediate future an unknown, the onus was on all-rounder Abhishek Nair to perform. And he did just that.

Nair, who was a very consistent performer for the Mumbai U-22’s last year with 181 runs at 38.40 and 14 wickets at 19.10, wasted no time in taking the attack to Rajasthan - his first scoring shot was six over long-on.

His drives were crisply timed and his presence at the wicket ensured that runs came at a rapid pace.

“He (Nair) batted extremely well. We find ourselves in this position because of his sparkling innings. It was a great knock,” said Muzumdar, who had the ringside view of the innings during his 143-run partnership with Nair.

“The first thing one notices about Nair is his body language. It looks like he wants to achieve something with the bat and the ball, that’s how the body language of a Mumbai cricketer should be.”

Nair was dismissed caught in the slips trying to further force the pace in the afternoon session and he will be disappointed to miss out on a century once again, having scored 97 against Gujarat.

Sharma did come back onto the ground to score his third consecutive fifty in Ranji Trophy competition and hit a few big shots to assure onlookers that the back spasms were not very serious.

Come Thursday morning, Mumbai will be looking to stretch their advantage to at least 350 runs before declaring the innings.

Rajasthan’s bowlers struggled to make an impact but that was mainly because they didn’t bowl well consistently enough.

Mumbai should settle for nothing less than a win with the bonus point in tow from this match now.

Scorecard

Rajasthan (1st innings): 155
Mumbai (1st innings; overnight 93-2):
S Kukreja lbw Mathur 30, V Mane c Pankaj Singh b Afroz Khan 20, H Shah c Mathur b Aslam 26,A Muzumdar c Jadeja b Aslam 117, R Sharma c Kohda b Aslam 72, A Nair c Khoda b Afroz Khan 86, A Agarkar lbw Aslam 20, R Powar c Solanki b Aslam 28, V Samant batting 41, N Kulkarni batting 9
Extras (b 1, lb 10, nb 4) 15
Total (for 8 wkts, in 131 overs) 464
FoW: 1-45, 2-61, 3-93, 4-327, 5-354, 6-354, 7-390, 8-431
Bowling: P Singh 20-4-56-0, Mathur 18-6-41-1, Aslam 39-7-132-5, Kanwat 27-3-110-0, Afroz 16-2-73-2,  Jadeja 8-1-25-0, Gehlot 3-0-16-0.