Mumbai Ranji title: How the maidaan boys, Musheer Khan, Tanush Kotian and Tushar Deshpande, delivered

Chasing 538, Vidarbha brought the equation down to 205 runs in the last two sessions with five wickets in hand. The captain Akshay Wadkar had scored a fine century and with each passing run, the frustration among the Mumbai rank and file piled up. “Ajju bhai (Ajinkya Rahane), DK bhai (Dhawal Kulkarni) kept reminding us to stay patient,” Kotian said. “But it wasn’t easy.”

And when the clock struck 1, the moment when the match swung decisively in Mumbai’s favour arrived. Kotian delivered a ball that was slightly quicker through the air. Wadkar tried playing it on the leg side but couldn’t connect and the ball hit him on the front pad below the knee-roll plumb in front of the stumps.

Mumbai player Tanush Kotian celebrates the wicket. (PTI)

The wicket proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. And half an hour later, the resilient Vidarbha were buried under the avalanche of runs. Mumbai, who last won the Ranji Trophy in 2015-16, won by 169 runs to clinch their 42nd title.

It was fitting that the decisive moment came from Kotian. For, in a squad of India superstars, it was the maidaan boys who played central characters in helping them to reclaim the Ranji Trophy after nearly a decade on Thursday.

Match made in maidaans

Growing up in Chembur, Kotian, the son of a cricket umpire from Udupi, was writing his cricketing dreams by putting in the hard yards from an early age. Like thousands of kids with soaring ambitions who stand under the harsh sun at the Oval, Cross and Azad maidaans in their dusty whites, Kotian played the Giles Shield and the Haris Shield – the famous school competitions that act as launchpads.

His partner-in-crime this season, Tushar Deshpande, would join the morning rush, hop on a local train and travel 50 km from Kalyan, a distant suburb, to the city centre at Shivaji Park.

At the fabled ground, one morning many years ago, Deshpande appeared for Under-12 selection trials. A keen batsman, he noticed that the queue for the bowlers was shorter. So, slyly he went and stood there. To get his first breakthrough, Deshpande was prepared to let go of his first love.

There was no such problem for Musheer Khan, born in a family of cricket tragics led by an enterprising father, Naushad. Moeen, the elder brother of the latest Khan prodigy, has a story to tell that captures the essence of Mumbai cricket.

Mumbai: Mumbai’s Musheer Khan celebrates his century during the third day of the Ranji Trophy final match between Mumbai and Vidarbha, at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (PTI Photo/Shashank Parade)

Ahead of the Ranji Trophy semifinal, the young Musheer had to prepare for the tall Tamil Nadu spinner Sai Kishore. With few options to spar with in the vertically-challenged Mumbai team, his father stacked 2-3 bricks, stood on top of them and released the ball from a high point for hours together. It’s the latest nugget of street-smartness from the family that gave India its latest Test player, Sarfaraz.

The stories of these three players capture the essence of Mumbai cricket – Deshpande’s opportunism, Khan’s jugaad and the structure that enabled Kotian’s rise. Their paths intersected in Mumbai whites whose legacy can be both, a burden and a privilege.

Through the course of these five days, some of the game’s legends who have worn that famous shirt popped by to cheer the team, right from Sunil Gavaskar to Ravi Shastri, Dilip Vengsarkar to Sachin Tendulkar and Rohit Sharma.

Wadkar, the Vidarbha captain who did everything in his capacity to stop Mumbai, knew they weren’t up against just a team. It was a culture they were taking on. “Mumbai is the home of cricket. People play the sport here in every gully. To perform here, play here is special. Very special,” he said.

Reasserting pre-eminence

There have been many famous title-winning campaigns but this will feel a lot sweeter for it comes at a time when Mumbai is reasserting its pre-eminence on the national scene.

There are close to 10 Mumbai players across Indian teams – from the Test to white-ball sides and even India ‘A’ for whom Deshpande recently played. The go-to opening pair in Test cricket, Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal, is from Mumbai. And, in Kotian and Deshpande, the city also boasts of the finest No. 10 and 11 with the bat.

At different phases during the season, Mumbai had to work its way around this rather than benefiting directly from it. For instance, the team was without Jaiswal from the start and their other star, Sarfaraz Khan, had to leave them mid-season after getting a national team call-up while Shivam Dube, was ruled out after picking up an injury.

The India discards were back but while Shardul Thakur was a major contributor to the title run Prithvi Shaw, Ajinkya Rahane and, towards the later stage, Shreyas Iyer blew hot and cold.

Mumbai: Mumbai’s Shreyas Iyer plays a shot during the third day of the Ranji Trophy final match between Mumbai and Vidarbha, at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (PTI Photo/Shashank Parade)

The loss of form of key players and loss of key players for a larger cause was an adversity Mumbai dealt with in the most Mumbai way: with the maidaan thoroughbred rising to the occasion.

Be it Mohit Avasthi, who set the tone in the first match of the season by rattling a sorry Bihar with his pace. Or the ever-reliable Shams Mulani, who produced valuable knocks with the bat while dutifully performing his primary role as a bowler, put his hand up whenever the team needed.

Musheer, from the moment he joined the team after the Under-19 World Cup, became a rock, scoring at an average of more than 100 and coming up with crucial contributions with the ball – the wicket of Karun Nair towards the end of Day 4 put the result beyond any doubt, no matter the fight Vidarbha staged.

And then there were Deshpande and Kotian, the pace-spin duo who could make some of the established batsmen look pedestrian.

But it was symbolic that in a season where maidaan youngsters came up with career-defining performances, it was one of the OG maidaan legends who landed the final blow. Dhawal Kulkarni, playing his final match for Mumbai, dismantled Umesh Yadav’s stumps to end his team’s long title drought.

Kulkarni, as an 18-year-old, had had a huge role to play in Mumbai’s title in his debut season. As he bowed out, the 35-year-old had the final say.