Former India captain and Mumbai Cricket Association’s Cricket Advisor Dilip Vengsarkar has expressed disappointment over Mumbai’s failure to defend their Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy title this season.
The defending champions dominated the league stage in Lucknow, losing just a solitary game to Kerala and winning six matches. When the tournament moved to Pune for the Super League, India pacer Mohammed Siraj-powered Hyderabad outclassed Mumbai by nine wickets in the opener. Mumbai bounced back strongly, beating Haryana and Rajasthan, but a comparatively lower Net Run Rate (NRR) kept them out of the final despite having eight points like Hyderabad and finalists Haryana. Mumbai finished with a NRR of -0.701, compared to Haryana’s 2.325 and Hyderabad’s -0.413. “I’m disappointed, there’s no question about it, because you want to win [the trophy]. I understand in T20s anything can happen as there is no strong team and weak team. So, any team can beat the strongest team. But, we were definitely expecting much better results,” Vengsarkar, a veteran of 116 Tests, told mid-day on Thursday.
India batter Ajinkya Rahane was Mumbai’s top-scorer with 395 runs from 10 games, followed by Sarfaraz Khan with 329 in seven matches. In the bowling department, medium pacer Sairaj Patil (14 scalps) and skipper Shardul Thakur (13) were the top two wicket-takers for Mumbai.
MCA secretary Dr Unmesh Khanvilkar felt that one bad day in the office hurt the Mumbai side: “We played very well in the last two matches, but had we won the first game against Hyderabad, the story would have been different. One bad day cost us the final, and we failed to retain the trophy.”