Mumbai rout Maharashtra by innings and 154 runs, book semis berth

Nashik, Jan 13 (UNI) Mumbai, putting behind their disastrous start to Ranji campaign, thumped Maharashtra by a huge innings and 154 runs in their Super League Group B encounter to book a semifinal berth at the Gold Club ground here today.

Mumbai needed just eight overs on the fourth and final morning to polish off the remaining four wickets of Maharashtra and sail into the semifinal as the second team from Group 'B' with 15 points behind Bengal.

This was a remarkable comeback by a side which had failed to get a single point from its first three matches and then winning the next three on the trot.

Maharashtra, starting the day at 148 for six, needed a miracle to save themselves and that was not coming with lanky left-arm spinner Nilesh Kulkarni getting Satyajit Satbhai off the first ball of the day's play. Kulkarni invited the batsman to drive at a flighted ball and beat him in the air and pouched a return catch with the Maharashtra score at 148 for seven.

Swapnil Hazare then got Anupam Sankelcha (2) caught in the gully playing an uppish cut shot and then Nilesh took his tally to six in the innings polishing off the tail, leaving Maharashtra captain Sairaj Bahutule (14) stranded.

Nilesh Kulkarni, with six wickets in the second innings, was the standout bowler for Mumbai and he was well supported by Ajit Agarkar who got the initial breakthroughs yesterday with the wickets of Dheeraj Jadhav and dangerman Hrishikesh Kanitkar.

Swapnil Hazare, who went wicketless in the first innings, got two scalps as Mumbai put up a complete team display to decimate arch-rival Maharashtra.

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