Ranji Trophy 2019-20 | Looking at the history, Mumbai always come back stronger, admits Suryakumar Yadav

For Mumbai, this could be marked as arguably one of the worst starts to a season, with consecutive defeats before their clash against Tamil Nadu. Following the success in the opening half of the season, Mumbai faced Railways in a game, which everyone called as a cakewalk for Suryakumar and co. However, that was not true as the game stung the side like a bee; a ten-wicket loss against Railways followed by a five-wicket loss against Karnataka has put their season on the backroads. 

“Like against Railways, we failed to score big due to lack of application. We could have done better in all departments. We failed as a unit. Maybe in the first innings, we could have batted better and got a 20-run lead and in the second got those extra 50 runs,” he said.

After being put to bat first on tricky conditions, Mumbai crumbled early under pressure with the seamers taking the bulk of the wickets. Suryakumar Yadav’s partnership with Shashank Attarde took the home side to a respectable first-innings total of 194 before they conceded the first-innings lead to Karnataka, who scored 218. It all came down to the batters to give Karnataka a tricky run chase, however, they failed and it was only a matter of time before the visitors wrapped the game up. 

“I feel Mumbai versus Karnataka is always a tough encounter which we saw today. We were short by 50-70 runs, otherwise it would have been a close game. It’s a difficult situation to address but it’s just the third game. Looking at history, we have always come back stronger and we will come back stronger,” he said.

He further talked about Prithvi Shaw’s injury during the encounter against Karnataka, when the youngster hurt his shoulder trying to prevent an overthrow with a dive. 

“We always love winning home games but we won our away game and we will take that positive. Prithvi was experiencing a lot of pain in the shoulder but he requested me and the coach whether he could bat. We found that it was very difficult for him to do so.”