Five wickets and a valuable duck!

The Ranji Trophy semifinal between Mumbai and Tamil Nadu dawned on April 11 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The hosts were fortified by the presence of Sachin Tendulkar for the first time in the season. Also for the first time in the season, Mumbai decided to go in with a four pronged pace attack in Ajit Agarkar, Paras Mhambrey, Abey Kuruvilla and Santosh Saxena.

Samir Dighe won the toss and invited Tamil Nadu to make first use of the wicket and would have been reasonably bucked by the proceedings when shortly after lunch, the visitors had slid to 149/4. Saxena snared the third of those four victims, inducing an edge from JR Madanagopal through to Dighe. Hemang Badani and Robin Singh then frustrated Mumbai with a cavalier counterattack that lifted Tamil Nadu to 397/4 by close.

On the second morning however Saxena bagged the important scalp of Badani when the batsman had not yet added to his overnight score of 162, trapping him leg before in the second over of the day. Swashbuckler Reuben Paul then strode in and struck 20 off 20 balls before his stumps were rearranged by Saxena. Tamil Nadu were finally bowled out for 485 with Saxena's 3/91 an able foil to Agarkar's 4/83. But there was more to come. He was not quite finished yet.

Mumbai's reply revolved entirely around Tendulkar who raised successive century stands with Vinod Kambli and Amol Majumdar. But although he kept one end up, wickets fell progressively at the other end and it became clear that the see-saw battle of nerves was going all the way down to the wire. The burden of seeing Mumbai through to the first innings lead devolved upon their No.11 bat who arrived at the crease at 472/9. Amidst mounting tension Saxena kept out seven deliveries, one of which rapped him on the pads, culminating in a raucous appeal from the Tamil Nadu fielders. But his luck held as he added 18 runs with Tendulkar, of which his share was zero, to help Mumbai to a vital five run lead.

A demoralised Tamil Nadu then collapsed to 171 in their second innings. Saxena sparked off the procession by accepting a return catch from Sadagopan Ramesh and late in the innings he also saw the back of Ramesh's brother Sadagopan Mahesh for a duck, caught behind by Dighe. The 24 year old returned figures of 2/35 in the second knock, translating into a match analysis of 5/126 as Mumbai rolled to a comfortable eight wicket win and a title clash against Hyderabad.