Mumbai’s lower order showed more maturity than ours – Abhinav

Tamil Nadu captain Abhinav Mukund attributed his team’s six-wicket defeat to Mumbai in the semi-final to the batting collapse in the first innings that saw them slump from 178 for 2 to 305 all out. It was a total that was deemed insufficient after Tamil Nadu won the toss on a good batting track and they were always going to play catch up after Mumbai secured a 101-run lead in response.

“We should have scored 40-50 runs more,” Abhinav said after the match. “Someone should have had the maturity to take the innings through after DK’s [Dinesh Karthik’s] dismissal in the first innings. Maybe, if we had scored 350-360, they would have been under a lot of pressure, considering that they lost most of their top-order early. They were 180 for 4 and we let them build on. I thought that’s where we lost the game as their lower order showed more maturity than
 ours did.”

Abhinav was comfortable with the declaration late on Wednesday to set Mumbai a target of 251, and said it was done with the intention of having a crack at the openers in the evening. He conceded, however, he didn’t foresee the 17-year-old Prithvi Shaw taking the game away from Tamil Nadu. “He played quite fearless cricket. It was a brilliant innings,” he said. “He played some rash shots too, but got away with. But he lived by his sword and credit to him.”

At the end of the fourth day, B Indrajith had predicted that the spinners would come into play on a final-day pitch that had a few cracks and rough patches. Abhinav felt the pitch didn’t deteriorate as much as they expected.

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