Three batting specialists of Vidarbha were knocking the ball in the dry, bald patch outside the dugout when captain Akshay Wadkar breezed past them after the toss, ignored them all and gestured to spinner Parth Rekhade, shadow bowling beside the sightscreen, to pad up. Slightly bemused, even though he had batted at No 3 in the first innings against Mumbai, Rekhade blitzed up the stairs. Nearly 25 minutes later, he strode out with Dhruv Shorey to face the first ball of the game. He lasted merely two balls, leg before the wicket to a late-swinging pearler from MD Nidheesh on review. But it was the first sign that Vidarbha would outwit Kerala on the first day of the Ranji Trophy final.
When the makeshift opener retreated, the decoy one-drop walked in. Darshan Nalkande usually bats at No 8, but to nullify the moisture-induced movement, Vidarbha were ready to sacrifice a lower-order batsman.“We thought if they could face a few deliveries and take the shine off the ball, it would be good for the top-order batsmen. There was a bit of movement in the morning, and we thought why should we expose the top-order to the new ball? One good ball and you are gone,” explains Danish Malewar, on whose 138 not out and 215-run stand the hosts propelled to 258 for 4, from 24 for 3.
Run-wise, reversing roles made little difference. Nalkande survived longer—21 balls—than Rekhade and perished as delusional lower-order hand would. He tried to pull a climbing short ball from outside the off-stump and holed out to the lone man on the leg side. But more than the deliveries or time the pair consumed, the move froze Kerala – playing the Ranji final for the first time – into already ruing that they had wasted a toss, that they had shot themselves on the foot.
Inverting the batting pyramid is not a fresh strategy, even if rarely used. Sir Don Bradman, on a dangerously wet pitch in Melbourne (1937), opened with Bill O’Reilly and Chuck Fleetwood-Smith (“Smith going in at No 10 was an adventure,” Neville Cardus wrote). When the pitch’s djinns exorcised—even if the openers survived only eight balls — Bradman came out at No 7, and piled 270 runs. The strip here was not as deceitful as the Melbourne graveyard—“Never before” Cardus wrote, “have I seen a wicket so spiteful or eccentric”—but it deflated Kerala’s spirits as the day wore on.
READ MORE | Remember the name: Danish Malewar hits hundred in Ranji Trophy final to power Vidarbha
With every wicketless ball, every run scored, every four flayed, the toss faux pas could have come to haunt them. It challenged the unwritten Jamtha code, where teams unhesitantly bat first after winning the toss, compile a monstrous total and twinkle out the opponents in the fourth innings, when the pitch inevitably reveals its vile traits. In all the seven Tests at this venue, teams have batted first after winning the toss, even though some of them have ended up losing. Kerala’s logic, outrightly defensive and betraying their insecurities, could have been two-fold. A) Exploit the first-hour moisture. B) Batting second, they would know the exact target to chase so that they could bat accordingly. Both planes of thought were flawed.
The moisture on the sun-soaked ground would rapidly evaporate. An hour into the first session, the surface started playing true to its inherent nature. Two balls that kept low aside, nothing untoward occurred. On the slower side, but not slow enough to make batting laboured, stroke-making was straightforward for batsmen at this level. The seamers bargained little movement, spinners heckled negligible turn. Moreover, Kerala don’t possess condition-proof bowlers. The medium pacers swing and seam on green tops, spinners turn it square on drier surfaces. This deck offered neither, but a load of labour under the harsh afternoon sun.
Story continues below this ad
Worse, they sacrificed a top-order batsman for a seam bowler, thus weakening their batting. Except for the unshaved, uneven smattering of grass, there was little instigation to bowl first. No dark clouds hovering, no forecast of rain, no discernible vulnerabilities among Vidarbha’s batsmen when batting first. And potentially a fourth innings ordeal looms. It merely exposed their naivety, stemming perhaps from cluttered thinking.
Not that they didn’t persevere. Nidheesh pounded the ball with all his heart, wits and muscle, only for the ball to lose all energy after landing, whereupon it drawled to batsmen. Malewar and Karun Nair batted without much ado. Unless they plotted their own dismissals, they could bat deep into the day. So they did, with a double-hundred partnership, their second of the season. Malewar donned the lead act, while Karun contently sang the backing vocals.
A run out, the only avenue a wicket seemed like falling, ended the stand. That was the only moment of madness Vidarbha endured, and Karun threw his bat in a fit of rage. He looked destined for another hundred, before he defied the sacred truism: never run off a misfield. “He was gutted, he was batting so well,” Malewar admits.
The run out did lift Kerala’s flagging morale at the fag end of the day. But to contain Vidarbha from hurtling into a monstrous total looks intimidating, what with their highest run-getter, Yash Rathod, Wadkar and utilitarian lower-order hands ready to cash in on a flaccid deck bleeding runs. But as much as the supple frame of Malewar, the faces of the two-night watchmen, Rekhade and Nalkande, would haunt them this night.
Brief scores: Vidarbha 254/4 (Danish Malewar 138*, Karun Nair 86, MD Nidheesh 2/33)
