Srinath could make a difference

“They are poor losers. That is why they are talking such nonsense like my bowlers using vaseline, or they having to bat on a damp pitch. After all, they must remember that it was their batsman who was asked to change his spiked boots after repeatedly running on the pitch.”

“Pure and simple we have, in Ubaid Kamal, Ashish Zaidi and Mohammed Saif, the second best pace attack in the country after Karnataka. They have done well this season and it is time they were givencredit for their achievements against Mumbai, Maharashtra, Haryana and Tamil Nadu.”

UP have banked so heavily on their three-man pace attack this season that it might well turn out to be to their disadvantage on the KSCA Stadium pitch. The Bangalore pitch is not as seamer-friendly as the other venues of UP’s finest exploits this season.

If anything, the pitch here has assisted spinners over the past couple of seasons, much to the chagrin of Karnataka’s four India pacemen, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Doddanarasiah Ganesh and David Johnson.

This might now work to the home team’s advantage, especially as the team is without Venkatesh Prasad (away on national duty in Sharjah) and David Johnson, who was this morning advised a further three weeks rest for his pulled hamstring muscle.

UP’s Mohammed Saif, a young all-rounder, is spoken of highly by fellow cricketers while his younger brother Mohammed Kaif is reputed to be a batsman in the Mohammed Azharuddin mould, according to his India A managerKrishnamachari Srikkanth.

Besides these two, former Punjab paceman Ubaid Kamal is a highly experienced bowler, as is his new ball partner AW Zaidi. On the other hand, Karnataka batting this season has been poor with only their late order batsmen and tail-enders pulling them out of trouble time and again.

Skipper Rahul Dravid admitted as much, but hoped that his main batsmen would get their act together for the final match. He was thrilled with the return of Srinath and added that besides his obvious merits with the ball, he would be a real asset batting in the lower order.

Srinath stated that he was looking forward to the match to further test his fitness. “I am fit and will inform the selectors of it,” he said after another long workout in the nets.

Ultimately, statistics like Karnataka’s 10th Ranji Trophy final to UP’s second or the home side winning the title four times to none by the visitors may mean nothing.

Teams:

Karnataka: Rahul Dravid (captain), Arunkumar, SujithSomasundar, Fazal Khaleel, Vijay Bharadwaj, Sunil Joshi, Shiruguppi, Ananth, Katti, Ganesh, Srinath, Mansoor, Girish Rao, Sriram, Johnson.

Uttar Pradesh: Gyanendra Pandey (captain), Rizwan Shamshad, Rahul Sapru, Manoj Mudgal, Saurabh Shukla, Zaidi, Md. Saif, Md. Kaif, Musi Raza, Rakesh Sharma, Jyoti Yadav, Asif Jaffer, Arvind Salanki, Shivadhar Bajpai.

Umpires: A Bhattacharjee (Calcutta), SD Deo (Pune).