Amre backs under-fire Muzumdar,Samant

The coach had admitted earlier in the season that Mumbai had talented reserve batsmen and bowlers,but they didnt have too many wicket-keeping options. On Wednesday,he jumped to Samants defence and hoped that the seasoned campaigner would don the gloves and deliver a worthy performance in Hyderabad.

Five wickets was all that separated Mumbai from a final berth going into the final day in Chennai,but Amre revealed that the team were nervous when they saw overcast conditions in the morning. At six in the morning,it looked ominous. But I was confident that we would finish them off. We deserved to go through after such a good performance, he said. The Makhwana-Dhruve partnership did make lunch-time uncomfortable for his team,said Amre,but everyone in the camp was relieved once it was broken. We also had to keep one eye on the proceedings in Nagpur,and we were updating ourselves with the scores there, he said,while insisting that Mumbai had no preferences when it came to the opponent in the final.

Mumbais star-studded attack struggled to dismiss Saurashtra. Zaheer Khan toiled for 31 overs,while Ajit Agarkar and Ramesh Powar failed to pose too many problems to the batsmen. Amre though said that the pitch did not have much for his bowlers. They have a number of decent batsmen in their line-up,and we always knew it wasnt going to be easy to take 10 wickets. But our bowlers gave it their best,and did manage to get them out, said Amre.