Mumbai on guard this time

Mumbai are used to playing without stars. Just that the team looks vulnerable, trying to plug the hole left by Wasim Jaffer’s 112.60 ru...

Mumbai are used to playing without stars. Just that the team looks vulnerable, trying to plug the hole left by Wasim Jaffer’s 112.60 runs per inning, which separates a typical Mumbai romp from Ramesh Powar’s desperate rescue missions.

Mumbai topped their group and were in the semi-finals with two games to spare. In the knockout, faced with a knockout, and some forgettable history comprising 20 minutes of batting hara-kiri against Punjab in the semi-finals a year ago, Mumbai are guarding against another batting blunder.

With a makeshift opening pair rendering the top-order suspect, the onus is on the middle order: Vinit Indulkar, Amol Muzumdar and Nishit Shetty. Though not in the immediate radius of national reckoning, the three are never too far from doing the star turns for Mumbai.

Also, all three can look back on previous semi-final encounters for inspiration, on the eve of the 2005-6 edition against UP at the Wankhede.

“We are looking at 400 and one of them has to get the big one. Starts of 30-40 won’t do,’’ declares coach Karsan Ghavri at the outset.

Amol Muzumdar, who has averaged over 70 this season with two hundreds and three 50s, recalls his 125, chasing 370 against MP in 1996-7 and partnering Sanjay Manjrekar. “That is still fresh in my mind, and we had pulled it off well,’’ says Muzumdar. ’’You’ve got to stay calm and feel responsible,’’ he adds.

For Nishit Shetty, who has made it a habit to hit his season-peak when the big matches come calling, managed the big-one two years ago, piping Baroda to the spot in the finals.

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“It was a 70-odd, but against a tough pace attack led by Zaheer Khan and on a seamer-friendly wicket. I tend to concentrate harder in the big games,’’ says the Mumbai mainstay.

Indulkar says his bravado vs Maharashtra was a “good learning experience.’’ Having starred with a century in a similarly difficult position against Karnataka, the one-drop batsman is hoping Mumbai doesn’t run into “one of those sessions’’ which spell doom for them these days.

If all else fails, Ramesh Powar is ready with his sledgehammer. “I do well under pressure but I don’t want to play in those circumstances again,’’ the stocky off-spinner says.