Nayar, Kukreja prop Mumbai up

For both Kukreja and southpaw Nayar it was back-to-back tons after their debut hundreds in the Mohd Nissar Trophy against Karachi Urban. They showed fine application against a bowling attack boasting of pacers like Munaf Patel, Ranadeb Bose and Ishant Sharma and spinners Pragyan Ojha and leggie Amit Mishra. In fact, the tweakers were in the line of fire during Nayar’s attacking innings and later the medium-pacers too where shown little mercy.

Munaf failed to fire again. He bowled 15.5 overs in five spells, with none producing results. Out of the 16 no balls bowled by the Rest of India bowlers, Munaf had 9. The early breakthroughs expected of him never came; instead, he gave away 31 runs from his first seven overs. Bowling in the mid 130-kph range, Munaf had pace, but he just didn’t get the line and length right.

Earlier, Mumbai elected to bat after winning the toss on a batsman-friendly wicket and were comfortably positioned with a 91-run stand between openers Ajinkya Rahane (52) and Kukreja. But soon they were tottering at 165 for 4 after Amol Muzumdar (8) and Wasim Jaffer (8) departed early. Nayar walked in and started playing his shots. He struck three boundaries in Ojha’s first over and two in Mishra’s. The Nayar-Kukreja pair added a crucial 171 to put Mumbai back on track.

“It was one of my important innings as it was scored against a premier bowling attack,” said Kukreja, whose innings had 17 fours. With Kukreja holding one end up, Nayar smashed most of the bowlers around the park — he had 20 fours and a six in his 108-ball innings.

With national selectors deciding to go for left-arm spinner Murali Kartik and dropping Ramesh Powar for the remaining two one-dayers against Australia, the off-spinner flew into Rajkot this morning to join Mumbai.

SCOREBOARD

Mumbai Ist innings: Sahil Kukreja run out 110, Ajinkya Rahane lbw Bose 52, Wasim Jaffer c Kaif b Bose 8, Amol Muzumdar lbw Ojha 8, Prashant Naik lbw Sharma 12, Abhishek Nair c Sharma b Ojha 118, Ramesh Powar not out 28, Ajit Agarkar c Raina b Bose 4, Omkar Guruv c Patel b Sharma 0, Iqbal Abdullah not out 16

Extras (b2, lb8, nb16, w3): 29, Total (for 8 wkts, 86 overs): 385

Fall of wickets: 1-91, 2-109, 3-150, 4-165, 5-336, 6-338, 7-342, 8-359

Bowling: Munaf Patel 15.5-0-71-0, Ranadeb Bose 22.1-4-88-3, Ishant Sharma 17-4-58-2, Pragyan Ojha 18-0-96-2, Amit Mishra 8-0-42-0, S Badrinath 5-0-20-0