By Qaiser Mohammad Ali, IANS
New Delhi : Uttar Pradesh captain Mohammed Kaif said Monday that his team, just one match away from winning the Ranji Trophy for the second time in three years, is aiming for a “strong finish” in the national championship.
Kaif, who captained the side when Uttar Pradesh won their historic maiden crown in 2005-06, said his team is confident of beating Delhi in the final, starting Wednesday in Mumbai, but would do nothing unusual to try and win their second title in the 74-year history of the tournament.
“We will treat the final as any other match. We will not do anything extraordinary, we will play to our potential as we did right through the season,” Kaif told IANS speaking by telephone from Mumbai.
“At the same time, we are a confident team, especially after some tough matches that we played, including the semi-final against Saurashtra, this season,” said the 27-year-old batsman who himself has been a prolific scorer.
He said the matches against Andhra Pradesh in Ananthapur and the drawn match against Punjab in Mohali were very tough, as was the 48-run loss to Baroda in Lucknow before the semi-final against Saurashtra that Uttar Pradesh won by 48 runs.
“The team gained a lot of confidence from these tough and close games. We played the last three matches under pressure of qualifying for the semi-finals. After these matches we realised that if we play this kind of cricket we could win the trophy again,” Kaif said.
After being at the bottom of the elite seven-team Group B in the early stages, Uttar Pradesh finished at the top with 19 points. They won three of the six matches played, lost just one — to Baroda in the league phase — and drew two to top the pool and qualify for the semi-finals.
Kaif lauded the performance of debutant right-arm pacer Sudeep Tyagi, the surprise packet in the camp. The Ghaziabad pacer has 39 wickets – just one short of the leading wicket taker R. Vinay Kumar of Karnataka.
Tyagi was dropped from the Uttar Pradesh under-22 side and the selectors and Kaif took a gamble by picking him in the absence of Rudra Pratap Singh, who is away in Australia, and old war horse Ashish Winston Zaidi, who retired last season.
“We had no option but to pick Sudeep and the move clicked well,” said Kaif.
“Suresh Raina (582 runs at 84.34 in seven matches) also batted very well throughout the season.”
Pacer Praveen Kumar (28 wickets in five), leg-spinner Piyush Chawla (27 in seven) and left-arm spinner Praveen Gupta (17 in four) were also impressive.
Among the batsmen, besides Kaif and Raina, Tanmay Srivastava (360 in six), Ravikant Shukla (320 in seven) and R.P. Srivastava (315 in six) were the prominent scorers.