Mumbai ride on Powar power; Gujarat follow-on

Gujarat still need 134 more runs to ensure that Mumbai bat again.

The visitors began the day needing 148 runs to avoid the follow-on but just when it seemed that the ovenight pair of Mukund Parmar and Tejas Varsani would steer Gujarat to safety, seamer Santosh Saxena had Parmar caught in the slips by Muzumdar and thereby opened the floodgates.

After this the only real defiance came in the form of allrounder Bhavin Mehta who remained unbeaten with a half-century, but the rest simply were bewildered by Ramesh Powar’s off-spin.

In their second innings however Gujarat started off well and both the openers, Nilesh Modi and Vivek Gandhi , thrived on the reprieves they got.

Interestingly, Powar was the unlucky bowler to suffer, for he watched as many as three catches being dropped off his bowling two by skipper and wicketkeeper Sameer Dighe and one by Vinod Kambli.

Mumbai Coach Ashok Mankad put these dropped chances as ‘‘tiredness’’, but he remained hopeful that Mumbai would be able to force a result on the final day.

But one thing that surely did not seem to enthuse him was the state of the wicket. ‘‘I was not consulted by the groundsman, if these are the pitches that we are going to play on, then good luck to Indian cricket,’’ remarked Mankad.

SCOREBOARD

Mumbai(1st Innings) 521 for 5 decl
Gujarat (1st Innings); (Overnight 124 for 3
Nilesh Modi run out (Morris) (49m, 36b, 1×4) 7; Vivek Gandhi c Dighe b Saxena (10b, 4b) 0 ; Niraj Patel c Muzumdar b Powar (104m,64b, 10×4) 54 ; Mukund Parmar c Muzumdar b Saxena (169m, 125b, 12×4) 61; Tejas Varsani c Dighe b Powar (138m, 99b, 4×4, 1×6) 41 ; Kirat Damani c Powar b Bahutule (65m, 60b, 4×4) 23 ; Bhavin Mehta not out (96m, 73b, 5×4) 50 ; Pathik Patel lbw b Bahutule (5m, 3b) 1; Hitesh Majmudar c Mhambrey b Powar (17m, 16b, 1×4) 19; Lalit Patel st Dighe b Powar (21m, 19b, 1×4, 2×6) 7 ; Bhavik Patel b Powar (17m, 19b) 2
Extras: ( 5lb, 4nb) 9 ; Total (all out in 85.4 overs) 274
Fall of wickets: 1-5 (Gandhi, 1.4 overs), 2-34 (Modi, 10.4), 3-78 (Niraj, 25.2), 4-164 (Parmar, 50.3), 5-178 (Varsani, 58), 6-206 (Damani, 67). 7-208 ( Pathik, 68.1), 8-235 (Majmudar, 73.3), 9-260 (Lalit, 80), 10-274( Bhavik, 85.4)
Bowling: Paras Mhambrey 15-2-42-0(2nb); Santosh Saxena 16-6-34-2; Ramesh Powar 23.4-4-77-5; Robin Morris 2-0-13-0; Rajesh Pawar 11-0-56-0; Sairaj Bahutule 18-5-47-2 (2nb)
Gujarat (2nd Innings) Nilesh Modi (176m, 145b, 7×4) 53 ; Vivek Gandhi (176m, 121b, 4×4) 53
Extras: (3lb, 2nb) 5
Total: (for no loss in 44 overs) 111
Bowling: Paras Mhambrey 7-3-19-0; Santosh Saxena 6-1-15-0; Robin Morris 3-0-8-0; Rajesh Pawar 6-1-14-0; Ramesh Powar 10-1-25-0; Sairaj Bahutule 10-2-22-0 (2nb); Vinod Kambli 2-0-4-0.