Saurashtra lost the Ranji Trophy 2015-16 final to Mumbai by an innings and 21 runs in less than three days in Pune. While the team did well in patches on the first two days; both with the bat (Arpit Vasavada and Prerak Mankad’s knocks to salvage the first innings) and ball (Hardik Rathod’s three wickets on the second evening to bring the team back into the game), they were outdone by Mumbai on the third day.
It was particularly their fielding (Shreyas Iyer dropped on 34 went on to make century and Siddhesh Lad dropped on 24 went on to make crucial 88 runs) that took the game away from them. Speaking to the media after the loss, coach Shitanshu Kotak said, “I think the bowling in the quarter-final and the semi-final was a lot better. Here it was not up to the mark. Still we got enough opportunities. We dropped four catches. In 10 games, I can’t remember four catches being dropped. It is one of those things and catches have been dropped by our best fielders. So that made a difference.”
However, he also credited the opposition’s efforts to seize the advantage. “Also, I think particularly Mumbai bowled very well. Also, we should have batted better in the second innings, but today morning, 30-40 runs lead and maybe it would have been a different story. I still believe that you can’t afford to get bowled out for 100-115 runs on the third day of the game.”
Asked if the pressure of the final resulted in the team getting bogged down, the Saurashtra coach said, “Overall, only two innings have been very fluent. Shreyas Iyer played a lot of strokes and (Siddhesh) Lad played well after the team was nine down. I don’t think it was (about) bogging down.
“Maybe the first thing was to lose the toss. That made it a little difficult because obviously the moisture was there in the wicket. The ball wasn’t coming that hard on to the bat. All in all, it looked like if you took a chance and played, you would have been better off. But it very hard advice to give to a batsman that you take a chance and play.
“Unless somebody’s game is like that and he plays to his game. But I think as a coach it is very difficult to tell a batsman you take a chance and play your strokes,” he said.
While analysing the team’s bowling in the morning, which conceded 109 runs for two wickets, he said, “We could have tried a little less. But from outside, you are handicapped. You can’t really say at that time. But I suppose when someone is very aggressive and if you try more and more, he gets a chance to score more and more runs. But this is a game, and on a day when you get him out, people say see, it’s was successful. On another day when you go for 60-70 runs, people say ‘Why did you try so hard?’ It is part and parcel of the game I suppose.”
While they lost the final, Saurashtra, who had been relegated to the C Group ahead of the season did well to enter the finals. They beat Vidarbha and Assam in quarterfinal and semi-final respectively.
Summing up the season, he said, “The biggest positive is we decided to come up from Group C. The way we played quarter-final and semi-final was excellent. Just the way our fast bowlers bowled, apart from this game also we were reasonable, but not to the standard we showed in the whole season. It is a positive (sign) when Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, UP and Delhi are not playing final and Saurashtra is playing.
Of course you want to win, but there is only one team that can win and they played well and all credit to them (Mumbai).
“We always keep trying to improve. As a team, I am proud of Saurashtra because after going to Group C last season, the way the boys have played, this probably is the worst game that we have played in 11 games and I would take it because it can happen. But I think we can keep coming stronger again and again and one day we will win it,” the coach said.
