A victory over Mumbai was decided by a margin of six wickets. Madhya Pradesh 536 (Dubey 133, Patidar 122, Shubham 116, Mulani 5-173) and 108 for 4 (Mantri 37, Patidar 30*) defeated Mumbai 374 (Sarfaraz 134, Jaiswal 78, Yadav 4-106) and 269 (Parkar 51,
Madhya Pradesh has won the Ranji Trophy for the years 2021–2022, 69 years after their previous team, Holkar, last claimed the coveted trophy and 23 years after their last attempt. On a dreary Sunday day, MP defeated 41-time champions Mumbai at the same location where they suffered heartbreak in 1998–1999 to win the championship.
On the fifth day, shortly before tea, MP turned a potentially difficult 108 chase into an easy victory when Rajat Patidar pushed Sarfaraz Khan for a single-wide of point. Patidar, whose 122 contributed to MP’s 162-run first-inning lead, was 34 not out alongside captain Aditya Shrivastava.
When Yash Dubey’s resistance was pierced by Dhawal Kulkarni in the third over, leaving MP 4 for 1, Mumbai’s bowlers knew they had to go all-in. The passage that followed for the following half-hour was interesting, with runs trickling in. However, MP didn’t appear to be under any stress as he calmly dealt with the new-ball burst and occasionally dispatched a boundary ball with the fields in to keep chipping away at the runs.
The batters sought to go for the big hits after the pitch was set. There were no further surprises after Himanshu Mantri and Parth Sahani were fired as a result of this. To the well-known RCB chants, Patidar teased the audience with some brilliant cover drives.
Mumbai’s hopes of posting a higher score were dashed from the start as they continued to lose wickets at regular intervals, despite MP switching back to a conservative line of attack throughout the morning. To defend the off-side boundary, their placers used a wide line with six fielders that was nearly sixth stump outside of off. They used a leg-stump line with six fielders placed on the leg side to defend against spin, especially Kumar Kartikeya’s left-arm type.
Mumbai was therefore needed to pick up the pace. Saved Parkar, who scored 252 runs on his debut against Uttarakhand in the quarterfinals, reached fifty before falling shortly after Arman Jaffer was trapped by a slower delivery from Gaurav Yadav. Early losses for Mumbai led to a march by MP.
Sarfaraz effectively used the sweep and maintained hitting against the turn to bombard several locations along the leg-side boundary. When he holed out to deep backward square leg off left-arm spinner Sahani, he scored 45 runs before becoming the sixth wicket to go. He finished the season with 982 runs, 324 more than Patidar, who came in second.
Sarfaraz was out to the shot that got him runs, sweeping from far outside off to reach the boundary rider, after sweeping his way to some useful runs. Mumbai’s final three overs didn’t present much of a challenge to the bowlers and were quickly dismissed for 269, giving MP more than two sessions to chew on the goal.
To set the stage for some serious jubilation in the MP camp when they were revealed, MP banished early jitters. Chandrakant Pandit, the player who grieved on the field after the heartbreak of 1998–99, had his moment of redemption just before tea after spending five days immobile in the dressing room while barking out instructions through the 12th man. For the remainder of the youthful gang led by Shrivastava, it was time to celebrate because a decisive first step had been made toward taking over the red-ball scene.
