Maharashtra 274 (Khurana 82, Mundhe 60, Chahar 4-63) and 105 for 1 (Gugale 56*) beat Rajasthan 270 (Puneet 127, Fallah 4-49) and 106 (Mundhe 6-38) by nine wickets
Scorecard
'Tu fakt ball taak, baaki batsman swatah karnar' (you just bowl, the batsman will do the rest). That was the call for Shrikant Mundhe from the slip cordon just before Deepak Chahar, the Rajasthan No. 9, threw his bat at an outswinger from the bowler and edged to second slip. If someone had only seen that over, the comment would have sounded like an indictment of batsmen playing loose cricket and the bowler not having to do much. But what the fielders actually meant was: you just bowl, the batsmen don't have a clue.
Out of seven batsmen dismissed before Chahar, four had been caught behind, two lbw and one bowled. Run-scoring had been hard-work against the accuracy of the Maharashtra seamers even in the first innings, but the pitch had not responded to the bowlers the same way on the first day. It did so to the Rajasthan bowlers on day two, and it continued to do so on the third morning as Mahrashtra, led by Mundhe's career-best 6 for 38, cleaned up the visitors for a paltry 106 in 45.4 overs.
Buoyed by an excellent day with the ball and freed of any fourth-innings pressure, the Maharashtra batsmen scuttled through in the chase with a flurry of boundaries, and reached the target in 19.3 overs. The win - Maharashtra's second in two matches - shot them up the Group B points table, taking them to 16 from five games, and massively improving their chances of making it to the knockouts. Rajasthan, stuck on 11 with only two games remaining, face a steep climb.
After conceding a tiny four-run lead, Rajasthan had a real shot in setting up the game. They had wrapped up the Maharashtra innings within a minute of the start of play and their top order had not shown much discomfort in the first innings. Moreover, two lower-order partnerships had proved there was reward if the tricky balls were negotiated. The pitch had an even olive green tint on the first day. By the third, there were areas that still preserved that shade, but there were patches - beige, cream, light green, dark green - that either made the ball bounce extra or stay low, seam in or seam away.
Eight balls into the second innings, Pranay Sharma was surprised by the bounce from Anupam Sanklecha as he pressed forward to a length ball and edged it to the keeper. Three overs later, a similar delivery from Fallah seamed away to take the outside edge of Vineet Saxena's bat. A partnership would have helped settle Rajasthan's nerves but when umpire Nick Cook ruled in favour of Mundhe a marginal lbw call against Robin Bist and Rohit Motwani, the wicketkeeper, brilliantly caught Rajesh Bishnoi one-handed, the visitors had lost their first four for 37.
With Ashok Menaria being held back because of a bout of antibiotic-induced runs and dehydration, the wobble was officially on. Azeem Akhtar took a sharp blow to his wrist once on a Mundhe delivery before succumbing to another length ball on off, the keeper taking an easy catch. Menaria finally walked out and blocked out 36 balls before lunch, but on the first ball of the last over of the morning session, Rahul Tripathi made the big strike, swinging a full delivery into first-innings centurion Puneet Yadav's pads. At that point, it became clear the game would end on day three.
Rajasthan would have hoped for a partnership from somewhere but Mundhe, the least threatening of the Maharashtra quartet, made short work of the lower order, picking up the remaining four wickets. That meant Maharashtra's seamers had accounted for 19 out of 20 wickets, vindicating their decision to enter the match with a four-pronged pace attack.
