Sloppy Baroda hand over Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy to UP

Baroda were let down by the men who had performed so well in the tournament to take them this far. Irfan Pathan, who had taken 16 wickets in the games prior to the final, couldn’t find any swing and leaked 44 runs. Hardik Pandya who had played a couple of furious knocks at this venue last week, earning quite a fan following, could make just 13. Similarly, Hooda eked out just 15. Yusuf Pathan continued with his disappointing tournament, making a laboured 27-ball 14 and the game ended in a whimper.

The star of the chase was Kuldeep Yadav with that double strike. He broke the ball back into the right-handers, and also sprinkled enough googlies to keep the batsmen honest. He got one to drift across Pandya who tried to whip it straight but ended up scooping it back to the bowler. And after teasing Hooda with his variations, he slowed up the pace on one, inducing Hooda to hole out to long-on. No batsman was comfortable against him and he ended up with impressive figures of 4-0-12-2.

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It wasn’t just their batting that let down Baroda but their fielding too that did them in. Raina was given a reprieve on 32, when wicketkeeper Pinal Shah missed a stumping chance. Shah was involved in another chance when he failed to hold on to a lunging chance to his right, off Munaf Patel’s bowling, that could have got rid of the top-scorer Prashant Gupta for just 5 runs. Piyush Chawla, who hit a 13-ball 17, too was dropped on 1 when Yusuf Pathan clanged a catch.

Nothing went right for Baroda. Munaf Patel was mobbed by his teammates after it seemed he had induced Prashant Gupta to mistime a pull to midwicket but the television replays confirmed the umpire’s suspicion that he had overstepped for a no ball.

On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh did just about enough without ever extending themselves. They reached 73 for 1 in 10 overs and pushed on a bit in the next half to end with a competitive total. Raina started with a crisply punched on-the-up hit over covers off Munaf Patel but settled down to clip and drive for singles and twos. He hit the occasional boundary without ever going berserk to end up on an unbeaten 47.

The victory meant a lot to the UP boys. Amid fist pumps and hugs, the lucky few grabbed the stumps, and the support staff dashed out to the middle to trigger more celebrations. As the presentation ceremony ended, someone in the Divecha Pavilion stands found a gate ajar and around 30 odd fans ran in to partake in the celebrations.

Brief scores: Uttar Pradesh 163/7 (Prashanth Gupta 49, Suresh Raina 47 n.o.; Bhargav Bhatt 2/13) beat Baroda 125/7 (Soaeb Tai 26 n.o.; Ankit Rajpoot 3/30, Amit Mishra 2/33, Kuldeep Yadav 2/16) by 38 runs.