Mumbai lost to Maharashtra in Vijay Hazare quarter-final. (Source: AP)
A sudden gush of excitement burst forth from veteran curator Daljit Singh’s mouth. Or, for that matter, most mouths at Palam. Scattered discussions were abruptly snapped and post-lunch inertia dissipated, as the collective attention converged on what they’d just seen, or heard. Mumbai were still gasping in disbelief. Left-arm spinner Dhrumil Matkar had just made a delivery kick up from a spinner’s good length, whipping up a cloud of dirt, as it hustled past SS Mundhe’s outside edge and settled chest-level in keeper Aditya Tare’s gloves.
It was just the ninth over of the sunny afternoon, and it spontaneously lifted Mumbai’s soggy spirits, desperately in need of some uplifting after scoring a middling 222 on a pitch that had largely behaved well. Matkar, his confidence buoyed, kept probing that particular piece of the strip. Another one skidded off the surface, another spun and spat past Mundhe’s outside edge. The domestic glitterati had a sudden feeling that the score was defensible, and that their pair of left-arm spinners, Matkar and Shams Mulani, could keep their hopes of not ending the domestic season without a trophy, alive . Tare deputed more men on the catching shift. Inside the 12th over, both spinners were bowling in tandem. They collected plenty of dots and dried up the runs.
But with each passing wicketless over, Tare was getting increasingly bothered. He did his best MSD-bit, barking out instructions, urging and imploring them, sometimes to bowl fuller, on other occasions to give more flight or land the ball in that particular spot. Matkar and Mulani were trying as hard as they could, but to no avail.
In the end, they returned with impressive but not gamechanging figures—Matkar conceded only 38 from 10 and Mulani just 45. On a day their vaunted batsmen let Mumbai down, it’s unfair to put the blame on spinners. “No doubt, it was disappointing that they couldn’t pick wickets when it mattered. But they are very inexperienced and not used to bowling in pressure situations,” Tare pointed out. Both are yet to make their first-class debuts — Matkar has featured in only seven List a matches and Mulani just three. And in all fairness, both are still uncut to be strike bowlers.
They could be moulded into reliable restrictors, but aren’t blessed with supreme wicket-taking skills or acumen. Their callowness further came to the fore when Rahul Tripathi flat-batted Mulani over long-on. Thereafter, his trajectory got flatter and he seemed inclined only to fire the ball in as fast as he could. It was a strip that demanded the subtleties and variations of a spinner. The cross-breeze also assisted drift, but neither could harness it.
A long-standing problem
But what would worry Tare and Mumbai is that it has been a recurring theme for them for the last few years — the dearth of a stable, long-term spin option. In this year’s Ranji Trophy alone, they tried Vijay Gohil, Karsh Kothari, Aditya Dhumal, all left-arm spinners, besides the part-timer Jay Bista. Together, they picked 27 wickets in 330 overs, taking nearly 100 balls for every wicket. Their ineptness was partly mitigated by the compensatory efforts of the seamers, the trio of Dhawal Kulkarni, Akash Parkar and Shardul Thakur. On Wednesday, Tare had just Kulkarni, but to compound his woes was uncharacteristically erratic. “Dhawal just had an off day. But what would I do with four bowlers (spinners) who made their debut just this year?” he fumed.
Mumbai’s spin bowling has been a worry ever since Ramesh Powar, who was their spin-bowling coach until recently, drifted into his twilight years. The year before, Vishal Dabholkar, who seemed like carrying on Powar’s mantle, and Ankush Jaiswal were called for suspect action. Though Dabholkar returned with a remodelled action, he didn’t reprise quite the same sting. Then Iqbal Abdullah, who was once mocked as an inferior version of Ravindra Jadeja, switched to Kerala. Harmeet Singh, whose action was likened to Bishan Singh Bedi, fizzled out.
While spinners don’t pop up like batsmen from Mumbai, they have had at least one, or sometimes two, highly-pedigreed spinners in their ranks — like Powar, Sairaj Bahutule and Nilesh Kulkarni — through much of the last two decades. Though none of them sparkled in international cricket, or rather didn’t have a sustained run, they stockpiled impressive numbers in domestic cricket. Kulkarni had 357 victims at 24.89, Powar 470 at 31.31 and Bahutule 630 at 26.
Resultantly, Tare is left casting envious glances at the opposition spinners. Unlike Mumbai’s callow spinner pair, Maharashtra offie Praveen Kore not only bowled with considerable guile and poise for a debutant, but nipped the most dangerous of Mumbai’s batsman, Suryakumar Yadav, when he was engaged a handy little partnership with Mulani. Tare is hopeful Mumbai will find the answer to their most pressing concern sooner than later, and that his spinners will provoke more than just a stray gasp.
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