Having made final, Kaif UPs ante

Mumbai were conquered and Uttar Pradesh had just entered their third Ranji Trophy final ever, their first in eight years. So how did the pla...

Mumbai were conquered and Uttar Pradesh had just entered their third Ranji Trophy final ever, their first in eight years. So how did the players celebrate? With a game of volleyball, which soon split into several playful wrestling one-on-ones in a distant corner of the Wankhede stadium on Monday.

Soon after Gyanendra Pandey smacked an off-drive to romp past Mumbai’s target of 214 runs, the Uttar Pradesh dressing room emptied onto the field. It was a ploy first adopted by UP’s cricketers to keep the media at bay each evening and also to limber down after a long hard day on the field.

‘‘We bonded over volleyball games this season, not inside closed doors’’, Pandey said.

UP have never won the Ranji Trophy, but have twice gone down to Karnataka in the finals. And old warhorses Pandey and Ashish Winston Zaidi are keen to finish on the winning side this year. ‘‘We’ve stumbled twice, but after starting in ordinary fashion, we’ve reached the final this season, so we want to go all the way,’’ said a visibly excited Zaidi, who had triggered Mumbai’s batting collapse on the third morning and set up the win.

Essentially a mid-table side in the elite division, Uttar Pradesh had shrugged off a sluggish start to record three straight outright wins and can thank their bowlers for the turnaround.

‘‘Getting 20 wickets in all three matches means our bowling has been spot-on,’’ said captain Mohammad Kaif, who chose to play down his own crucial contribution of 128 runs over two innings, a quarter of the team’s scores. An enviable blend of wise old hands and youngsters like Piyush Chawla and Suresh Raina, who are on the national fringes, Uttar Pradesh turned the corner after Md Kaif took over from Jyoti Yadav. The team admittedly has looked a sprightly and fitter unit since.

‘‘It’s not that UP didn’t have good cricketers. Some like Zaidi were unlucky to miss the India bus. But now with so many youngsters coming up well and those like me and Raina in the India dressing room, we have started believing that we can aim higher,’’ said Kaif.

Story continues below this ad

Winning the Ranji Trophy at Kanpur is only the first step for this bunch. ‘‘The volleyball will remain constant,’’ reminds Shallabh Srivastav, a self-proclaimed crack setter.