Romance between Ranji Trophy and Mumbai didn’t helped them in the first innings of the 500th match.Baroda’s Atit Sheth and Lukman Meriwala picked up five wickets each to bowl Mumbai out for 171 in the Group C match at the Wankhede Stadium.Mumbai was unable to recover from the blows from the bowlers at any stage of the game.
Baroda made 63/1 in 26 overs in reply.A good combination of impressive swing and seam bowling from right-arm Atit (5/50) and left-arm Meriwala (5/52) made Mumbai batsman hard to get their timing right.Along with the bowling some poor shots attempted by the Mumbai batsmen that sent the home team to the doom.
Mumbai lost early wickets and were in trouble, 5/2 by the third over.Atit sending back in-form opener Prithvi Shaw and Ajinkya Rahane for ducks.Skipper Aditya Tare stood tall in making 50 before being bowled off the inside edge by Atit.
Before lunch they were down to 103/5.The 40 run stand between Dhawal Kulkarni (17) and Vijay Gohil (16) revived the innings for a brief while.Still it wasn’t enough, Mumbai were shot out at the stroke of tea.
Atit, a former India under-19 player who has a ten-wicket haul to his credit against Bengal at Lahli before this game continued his form, did the early damage in his 8th first class match, while Meriwala made sure tail did not wag for too long.Mumbai will be hoping to set them back early on day 2.
