Wisden India : The chink in Mumbai’s Ranji armour, and why it doesn’t matter
© BBCI
R Kaushik compares Mumbai Ranji sides with West Indies cricket and Brazilian soccer teams of a bygone age and explains how they possess the same drive. He goes on to explain that in a spinning wonderland that is India, Mumbai dominate the domestic scene without a world class spinner in their ranks.
From wisdenindia.com:
Successive West Indian teams from the mid-’70s to the early ’90s – with the exception of a year or so when the Packer boys went missing – ruled the cricket world with an iron fist. In their own backyard, on the fast, bouncy tracks in the Australia, in the pacer-friendly climes of England and New Zealand, and on the slower, lower surfaces in the subcontinent, they were unstoppable, at once an irresistible force and an immovable object that, paradoxically almost, crushed everything before it.
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Some might consider it blasphemous to talk of the Mumbai cricket team in the same breath as the Calypso Kings of the days of Lloyd and Richards, or the Brazilian virtuosos headlined by Pele and Garrincha, but it is well worth remembering that at the time of writing, they have won as many Ranji Trophy titles as the rest of the country combined. With a 42nd out of 83 not in the realms of the fantastic, either. They are to Indian domestic cricket what the Caribbean masters were to international cricket for a decade and a half. And what the Brazilian champions were to world football for so long until the chasing pack caught up with, and surpassed, them in terms of results, if not reverence and affection.
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The last spinner to come out of Mumbai who played with distinction for India is best remembered today for his exploits with the bat. Ravi Shastri cut his teeth as a left-arm spinner with the temperament and attitude of a fast bowler. He made his Test debut in New Zealand as a 19-year-old, took six wickets in the game and batted at No. 10, then swore that he would never ever bat that low down the order again. By the time he finished his India career, Shastri had worked his way up to the very top, making hundreds in England, the West Indies and Pakistan as well as a double hundred in Australia, and finishing with a respectable average of 35.79 from 80 Tests that brought him 11 hundreds. Oh, and he also ended up with 151 wickets, the second highest among Indian left-arm spinners after Bishan Bedi.
Read the full article here.
