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“Confident, but not getting carried away,” Ganesh Satish said of the mindset in the Vidarbha camp at the end of the fourth day of their Ranji Trophy 2018-19 final against Saurashtra in Nagpur.
On a pitch assisting spin and showing signs of variable bounce, Vidarbha are in a strong position – Saurashtra, chasing 206 for victory, are 58 for five. A steep ask from here on, and that explains Satish’s confidence. But the three completed innings so far have seen the bottom three wickets add 116, 123 and 66 runs respectively. “So we’re not getting complacent. We’re taking it one wicket at a time,” Satish said of his team, despite them being the defending champions and playing the game at home in Jamtha, Nagpur.
Vidarbha have Aditya Sarwate to thank to a large extent for getting them into a position from where they can realistically hope to defend their title successfully. With Vidarbha stuttering in their second innings, Sarwate got in and hit 49 to take them to 200 and set Saurashtra a tricky target. Then, following up his five-wicket haul in the first innings, the left-arm spinner picked up the first three Saurashtra second-innings wickets, including, again, Cheteshwar Pujara. This time for a five-ball duck.
“Throughout the season, and even last season, he’s consistently performing. He’s always getting crucial runs for us, and obviously with the ball – 50-plus wickets. It’s really a great achievement,” Satishsaid.
These low targets are never easy to chase, especially in such a high-pressure game
GANESH SATISH
The target of 206 would qualify as a low one, especially against a team that chased down a tournament-high 372 in the quarter-final against Uttar Pradesh and then a steep 279 against Karnataka in the semi-final.
“We knew we had to be positive. We knew there was some help for the spinners, so we knew we were always in the game. If you see even last year, we defended a couple of low totals. So that gave us confidence. The coach and the senior players, we spoke about it, that anything can happen. These low targets are never easy to chase, especially in such a high-pressure game. Anything can happen … a couple of quick wickets. So we were just thinking of getting a couple of quick wickets and putting some pressure on them,” Satish explained.
They certainly got those wickets quickly enough, and with the pitch not getting any easier to bat on, it might be tricky for Saurashtra to claw back from here.
“It’s a bit difficult to make runs (on the pitch). If you look to block, it’s not easy to get wickets as well. But it’s not easy to score runs, you’ve got to rotate the strike, take singles on this wicket. After a while, the ball does get softer, and the odd ball does, but not every ball. So you feel you’re in, but one good ball, that’s all it takes,” Satish said. “I think the bounce is okay, I don’t think that’s changed, it’s the speed of the wicket, it’s a little slow now.”
That said, those big chases on Saurashtra’s part in their last two games, and the batting record of the tail-enders in this game – those are there on the back of everyone’s mind.
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