Ranji Trophy Semi Finals: Can Prithvi Shaw and Mumbai conquer UP

Mumbai Ranji Trophy team skipper Prithvi Shaw with a teammate during an earlier match in the season. Pic/BCCI Domestic Twitter

When they arrived in the Garden City towards the end of last month, 41-time Ranji Trophy champions Mumbai would have had a semi-final showdown against hosts Karnataka on their minds. As it has turned out, it's a youthful Uttar Pradesh team that now stands between them and a place in the final of the country's premier first-class competition, racing towards its denouement after a two-year gap.

Pace threat from UP

It's debatable if Prithvi Shaw's men will view Uttar Pradesh's five-wicket defeat of Karnataka in last week's quarter-final as a positive development. After all, Mumbai's brand of cricket doesn't revolve around focusing too much on the opposition. That said, they can't ignore the pace threat UP possess in the five-day semi-final at the Just Cricket Academy ground from Tuesday, a threat bolstered by the inclusion in the squad of left-arm quick Mohsin Khan.

Nor will Mumbai overlook the fact that UP bounced back splendidly from conceding a 98-run deficit in the said quarter-final on the back of a brilliant unbeaten 93 in the fourth innings by their 23-year-old skipper Karan Sharma, who seems to have made it a habit of shoring up tall chases in his maiden season in first-class cricket. Where UP had to stage a grand comeback, Mumbai pretty much lorded their last-eight encounter against an overmatched Uttarakhand.

Their record-breaking 725-run win with more than a day and a half to spare perfectly illustrated the gulf between the teams. Mumbai flexed their batting and bowling muscles and will feel adequately confident, although they will have to make do without former captain and seasoned wicketkeeper Aditya Tare, who has returned home with a broken finger. All of Mumbai's top-order batsmen had useful workouts.

Debutant Suved Parkar clearly shone the brightest with a monumental 252, while Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shaw stacked up second-innings runs to take some momentum into the semis. Also among the runs, as he has been all season, was prodigal son Sarfaraz Khan, who smashed 153 in the first innings to follow up scores of 275, 63, 48 and 165 in the league phase.

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The 24-year-old, who represented UP for three seasons after debuting for Mumbai in December 2015, marked his return to Mumbai colours in the 2019-20 season with a blistering unbeaten 301 against his former side. Wonder what he has in store this time around.

Uneven bounce expected

The match will be played one strip away from the Bengal-Jharkhand quarter-final which produced 1,389 runs and just 24 wickets in five full days. There is a generous but slightly patchy covering of grass, suggesting that as the game progresses, there will be wear and tear, occasional uneven bounce and the promise of an outright result. Mumbai will be hoping their pedigree, if not necessarily experience within the squad of the big stage, will carry the day.