Internet Desk: Gujarat skipper Parthiv Patel played a gem of a knock to lead his team to win their maiden Ranji Trophy title as Gujarat beat defending and 41 time champions Mumbai on the final day at the Holkar Stadium in Indore on Saturday. Parthiv scored 143 runs for his team, which helped Gujarat to cross a huge target of 312 runs.
Resuming the day at 47 without a loss, Gujarat finally achieved the target half an hour into the final session of play. This is the highest total chased down in a Ranji Trophy final with the previous best being 310 by Hyderabad vs Nawanagar way back in 1937-38.
Chasing a challenging 312-run target, second-time finalists Gujarat were in trouble at 89-3 but a 116-run stand between Parthiv and Manprit Juneja (54) helped them stay in a strong position.
Gujarat have now joined an elite list comprising Holkar, Delhi, Karnataka and Haryana as the teams to defeat Bombay/Mumbai in a Ranji Trophy final. Mumbai have won the tournament 41 times, more than any other team.
“It was fantastic. Winning Ranji Trophy for Gujarat was a dream for all of us. Glad that I could score a century,” said Patel after the victory.
He added,”We have a young team, the average age of the team is 25. Our main motto was to stay positive and play well and throughout the season we tried to maintain this and the result was this win at the finals of Ranji Trophy. Priyank Panchal, Samit Gohel have done extremely well with the bat throughout the season, also the bowlers need special mention the likes of R.P.Singh who joined this season from Uttar Pradesh bowled exceptionally well. Also Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel too contributed very well for the teams success.”
Earlier Gujarat had won the Mustaq Ali T-20 in 2014-15, Vijay Hazare trophy in 2015-16 under the captaincy of Parthiv Patel. This year’s the Ranji trophy is yet another feather on Parthiv’s wings. Regarding this Parthiv said, “This is a dream come true to me, we were training hard to win the Ranji trophy and now feeling really satisfied after the win.”
Wasn’t chasing 313 runs on the fourth innings a difficult task? Parthiv said,”Chasing over 300 runs is always challenging in the fourth innings but we were determined to stay in a positive frame of mind throughout the chase. Would not only give the credit to the batsman but also to the pitch curator for making such a sporting pitch.”
Gujarat have become the 17th team to win the prestigious title.