The day when an underdog story is not as sweet
One of the greatest joys of cricket is the victory of the underdog. When a small team like Assam created history by reaching 2015-16 Ranji seems, a section of fans suddenly woke up from their slumber to applaud the brilliance. Unfortunately, it was difficult to have the same feelings on Monday.
Make no mistake, it's a great cricketing story that Chhattisgarh, a team that got BCCI affiliation only in 2015 to make its domestic debut, pipped Mumbai, the defending champions, to the post to secure semi-final qualification. As far as romanticism goes, this is right up there as players like Harpreet Singh and Amandeep Khare have made all the right noises over the years to deserve this fairytale day to their name. Chhattisgarh beat Mumbai in the league stage, that too in stunning fashion, in what was one of the most thrilling games of the season. Everything was fine and good.
Expect, Mumbai have all the rights to blame their luck, to cry in isolation as their hegemony got a stunning rebuttal. Placed in the same group, Chattisgarh got to play seven matches, while Mumbai had 6, with one and two games being washed out, resulting in points being shared. That came into the picture at the end, which puts Mumbai in the backfoot resulting in the former getting through to the semi-finals thanks to their two-point league stage advantage. That, after not being the favourite to win the game at any point in time.
For uninformed, here is a brief idea of how the game progressed today. Under cloudy skies, Chattisgarh were on 190 for 6 in 45.4 overs, but a sudden burst of rain forced the umpires to end their innings at that point only. According to the VJD method, a formula derived by a civil engineer from Kerala, V Jayadevan, which takes into account the statistics from previous games, Mumbai were given to chasing 192 runs in 40 overs.
With rain overhead, young opener Yashasvi Jaiswal smashed five fours and five sixes in his unbeaten 60 of 38 balls to guide Mumbai to 95/0 in 11.3 overs, after which further play was not possible. The match ended with No result next to it on the scoresheet, and Chattisgarh went through on the basis of more league stage wins. This was a fair call and a widely accepted one at that, but cricket is rarely a game played on logic. The emotions are bound to break the dam.
After all, Mumbai is a team that thrived on their brilliance and when the rain had to take away the defending champions tag away from them, it just doesn’t feel right. “It hurts but that is unfortunate. The rain was always overhead, and although Yashasvi played well to take close to the win, no one could do anything about it,” Pacer Tushar Deshpande was at his professional best while talking to SportsCafe but that was it. You expect a team to behave honourably in such a situation and that was what Deshpande did, but it is safe to assume that, at some corner in their heart, they would have felt hard done too. “We were all set to win the title this year again but one could hardly anything about it. Rules are rules and Chattisgarh have rightfully gone through.”
At the same time, it was also a day to rejoice for Chattisgarh. After Chhattisgarh became a different state, the state had no infrastructure of their own, which resulted in the state losing players like Jalaj and his brother Jatin Saxena and Harpreet Singh - members of India's Under-19 team at the 2010 World Cup - to Madhya Pradesh while also losing Sahil Gupta to Baroda and Sumit Ruikar to Vidarbha.
When the team tried to collect the debris to form the very spine of their own line-up, they found themselves at a crossroads. The team, in 2016, once fell prey to a Darshan Misal-inflicted damage against Goa in Cuttack as seven players fell for a duck. In the backdrop of that Junoon, everything changed and now this must be the watershed moment the team has been waiting for, for years. When they will take on Karnataka tomorrow at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, normalcy might resume, with the latter, more or less sure to dominate, but Chattisgarh should celebrate for the inroads they made while Mumbai can chill and focus on the Ranji Trophy.
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