Mumbai’s stand-in skipper Siddhesh Lad has questioned the BCCI for having a 9am start to their Vijay Hazare Trophy (VHT) quarter-final match against hosts Karnataka in Bengaluru on Monday, which the visiting team ended up losing via VJD method due to rain.
Put into bat, Mumbai’s batters struggled in the morning conditions and were 60-4 at one stage before Shams Mulani’s 86 helped them post 254-8 in 50 overs.
In reply, opener Devdutt Padikkal’s unbeaten 81 and one-drop Karun Nair’s 74 not out saw Karnataka reach 187-1 in 33 overs before rain halted play and the VJD method was employed.
Lad, who scored 38 in this match, was unhappy about the 9am start time at the BCCI’s Centre For Excellence ground in Bengaluru.
“The toss played a crucial role. If you’re playing the semi-finals and final at 1.30pm [day-night matches], why should a quarter-final be at 9.00am and that too in Bengaluru’s cloudy conditions? When you have the infrastructure in place then why make the toss such a crucial factor? With the ball moving for the first 30-40 overs in the morning, it’s difficult to score runs,” Lad told mid-day on Tuesday.
Having failed to make it to the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 tournament last month, this was Mumbai’s second defeat in a knockout phase.
Former Mumbai captain, ex-chief selector and MCA’s current Cricket Improvement Committee chairman Raju Kulkarni blamed it on frequent changes in the team.
As many as 22 players played for Mumbai this season in the VHT.
This includes India batting great Rohit Sharma (two matches), India T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav (two), India ODI vice-captain Shreyas Iyer (two), India Test and ODI opener Yashasvi Jaiswal (three) and India T20I all-rounder Shivam Dube (two).
“The Mumbai team struggled to settle in both tournaments [SMAT and VHT] due to frequent changes, inconsistency in the availability of our international players and fitness concerns. We relied more on individual brilliance than team performance. And, one bad day in the office, saw us get knocked out. Also, our youngsters did not do justice to the opportunities they got,” Kulkarni told mid-day on Tuesday.
