Vidarbha 380 for 3 (Rathod 116, Shorey 114, Nair 88*) beat Maharashtra 311 for 7 (Kulkarni 90, Bawne 50, Nalkande 3-64, Bhute 3-68) by 69 runs
Nair narrowly missed out on a fifth straight List A century only because he ran out of time. That he even got close to one is because of a sensational end-overs acceleration. On 51 off 35 balls with two overs remaining, Nair hit four sixes and three fours in the last two overs. This included a sensational sequence of 4, 0, 6, 4, 4, 6 in the final over against Rajneesh Gurbani, who was up against his former team. Nair took his run tally to 752 runs while being dismissed just once.
The only time Nair didn’t middle something was while attempting a couple of reverse sweeps early in his innings to build on the platform laid by the openers. But that didn’t stop him from being enterprising, as he played some delicate paddles, audacious scoops as well as some clean strikes down the ground – he hit nine fours and five sixes in all.
Maharashtra’s chase didn’t take off till the 30th over, when they were 153 for 3. Except for a four-over window from here, where Ankit Bawne and Arshin Kulkarni upped the ante with an array of stunning shots, the intent to make a serious pitch to scale down their target seemed missing.
It didn’t help that they lost Ruturaj Gaikwad in the third over when he top-edged a pull off Darshan Nalkande and was sensationally caught by Jitesh, who covered nearly 30 yards to his left before diving full-stretch to pluck a one-handed stunner.
Rahul Tripathi, their other big-match player capable of taking the attack to the opposition from get-go, made an attractive 27 off 19 before a heave across the line had him nicking behind in the ninth over. This is when Kulkarni appeared to have gotten stuck, on the face of some impressive bowling from Vidarbha, particularly from Yash Thakur, who was zippy, and Harsh Dubey, who was able to keep it tight with his left-arm spin.
Despite Kulkarni putting on a half-century stand with Siddhesh Veer, Maharashtra lacked the middle-overs firepower that allowed them to put any kind of pressure on Vidarbha as the game meandered until it briefly came alive in that short window after the 30th over. But those hopes ended when Kulkarni and Bawne fell in quick succession after scoring 90 and 50 respectively. Kulkarni’s runs came at a strike rate of 89.10 when the requirement was much higher.
Earlier in the day, Shorey began with three fours in the very first over off Gurbani, while Rathod brought the typical left-hander’s flair to get going as he climbed into left-arm seamer Mukesh Choudhary. The pair accelerated steadily, bringing their half-centuries in the 19th over.
Rathod was the more adventurous against spin and used his feet superbly to hit both with and against the turn. He brought up his second List A century of the season off just 90 balls in the 31st over and then tried to up the scoring. Shorey got there soon after, zipping through the 90s with two back-to-back boundaries and then bringing up his second straight hundred off 104 deliveries.
Maharashtra had their chances but they didn’t take. In the 24th over, they should have had Shorey for 57 when he got a bottom edge to wicketkeeper Nikhil Naik off Siddesh Veer. Had Maharashtra opted to review, they would have been able to overturn the on-field decision of not out. In Veer’s next over, Naik missed a stumping chance to dismiss Rathod on 76.
Then in the 45th over, Jitesh was put down on 19 when Naik failed to latch on to a skier to make it a forgettable day that even his 49 late in the second innings couldn’t quite compensate for. Nair, too, received a reprieve when, on 30, he was put down by Pradeep Dadhe at fine leg.
Whatever Nair did on the field from there on worked magically as Vidarbha recorded their eighth successive win to secure a maiden entry into the Vijay Hazare final.
Shashank Kishore is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
