Mumbai 164 for 4 (Rahane 98, Shreyas 46, Rawat 1-6) beat Baroda 158 for 7 (Shivalik 36*, Rawat 33, Shedge 2-11) by six wickets
With one run to win and Rahane on 98, he looked to hoick over square leg from the Pavilion End. But he got a top edge for the Baroda wicketkeeper to snaffle. However, Rahane’s knock helped Mumbai wrap up the first semi-final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy with a cakewalk of a chase of 159. As a result, they avenged defeat from last season, when Baroda had knocked them out in the quarter-final.
Rahane’s innings, which came off 56 balls, also featured 11 boundaries, including one off the first ball he faced. He started the second over of the chase by going 4, 6, 4 off Lukman Meriwala, Baroda’s best bowler from their quarter-final victory against Bengal. Mumbai had 30 on the board after three overs despite losing Prithvi Shaw, and until then, Rahane had cracked 22 from nine deliveries to set the tone.
By the end of the powerplay, Mumbai posted 61, and giving Rahane company in dispatching the ball around was his captain Shreyas Iyer. Baroda tried five different bowlers in the first seven overs, but nothing worked. After pulling Akash Singh for six wide of long-on to end the seventh over, Shreyas slashed and cut him for four, and pulled him for six in the ninth.
Next over, Rahane passed fifty when he hooked Hardik Pandya for six over deep square leg. Atit Sheth ended the 88-run stand when Shreyas, on 46, swung one to long-on, but Rahane never let Mumbai’s momentum slip. He swatted and heaved for three sixes out of the five balls he faced from the second half of the 14th over. Maybe he would have got his hundred had Baroda made more runs!
However, Mumbai would have restricted Baroda to a much smaller total had it not been for a 49-run seventh-wicket partnership off 27 balls between Shivalik Sharma and Sheth. From 103 for 6, Shivalik started the counterattack by hooking Suryansh Shedge for six, before Sheth scooped Shardul Thakur for four. The innings ended with three sixes in the final over off Thakur – one each for Shivalik, Sheth and Mahesh Pithiya – but Rahane, Player of the Match for the third time in a row, put all that into oblivion.
