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On Sunday, March 10, the Ranji Trophy final saw Mumbai getting bowled out for 224 in their first innings against Vidarbha at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Shardul Thakur, who scored a vital fifty in the lower order to rescue the Mumbai innings on Day 1, criticised the top-order batters of the team for not applying themselves well enough.
After being put into bat first by the Vidarbha captain Akshay Wadkar in the Ranji Trophy final, the Mumbai openers Prithvi Shaw (46) and Bhupen Lalwani (37) gave the team a good start. Yash Thakur broke the opening stand of 81 runs when he nicked off Bhupen Lalwani through to the wicket-keeper Akshay Wadkar.
From this moment onwards, Vidarbha bowlers were completely on top of Mumbai batters, on either side of the lunch break. They reduced the hosts to 111/6 at one stage, picking up the key wicket of Prithvi Shaw before removing Shreyas Iyer and the captain Ajinkya Rahane, both for an individual score of seven runs.
Shardul Thakur, who walked to the crease at the No. 8 spot in the batting order, stitched together small but critical partnerships with Shams Mulani, Tanush Kotian, and Tushar Deshpande. Before Umesh Yadav dismissed his fellow Indian teammate to bowl out Mumbai for 224 runs, he scored 75 runs off just 69 balls with eight fours and three sixes.
In his post-day chat, Shardul Thakur let his frustrations with the specialist batters of M umbai known to everyone by saying, as per Sportstar, “ We are not happy with the total that we have put on board. Certainly with the way we started off, if the top order had applied themselves, had the right attitude and approach, we could have reached 350 or even 370 with five or six wickets down at the end of the day’s play.”
