Ranji Trophy: Our batsmen lacked commonsense, says Mumbai's Dhawal Kulkarni

Dhawal Kulkarni loves his battles with Karnataka. It was he who frustrated the southern giants in 2009-10 Ranji final held at Mysore where his 181-ball 87 helped Mumbai beat the hosts by six runs to win the title. At the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium (VCA) in Jamtha here yesterday, Kulkarni repeated his heroics and rescued his side with a splendid 75. However, the all-rounder was unhappy with the way his team's top order batsmen negotiated the Karnataka pacers during the first hour of the Ranji Trophy quarter-final.

Dhawal Kulkarni

"When a game begins at 9 am, there is obviously something for the bowlers for an hour. Whatever happened today shouldn't have happened. But again, it's part of the game. The wicket was doing a bit and our batsmen should have used a bit of common sense and just negotiated that hour. There was nothing in the wicket after that," Kulkarni said yesterday.

The experienced Mumbai all-rounder felt it will be a learning lesson for the two young openers - Prithvi Shaw and Jay Bista. "Yes, they are very young in their careers. Hopefully, they will learn from this and won't repeat their mistakes again," he added. Kulkarni, who worked a lot on his batting during the off season, has scored three consecutive fifties this season. However, he rated his knock in the 2009-10 Ranji Trophy final knock as his best innings. "Obviously, that would rate much higher. Hopefully, this knock here turns out to be the same," he said.

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