TN, Vidarbha ready for a grudge match

February 16-20, 2015
Start time 0930 IST

In any other season, a knockout game between Tamil Nadu and Vidarbha would have seemed a face-off between perennial underachievers and surprise entrants. But there's more to it this year. This season, the contest is likely to be grudge match due to the presence of S Badrinath in the Vidarbha camp.

The domestic stalwart switched allegiance to Vidarbha from his home team, Tamil Nadu, ahead of the season. And he has made a statement. Not only by piling on runs in his trademark fashion but also by helping Vidarbha make it to the knockouts for the first time in almost two decades.

Vidarbha's move to revamp their core group by bringing in Paras Mhambrey as coach and Badrinath, Ganesh Satish and Rakesh Dhurv as professionals paid rich dividends as the team exceeded all the expectations by finishing third in Group B.

Tamil Nadu were able to capitalise on their strategy of preparing turning tracks for home games. Their spin troika of Malolan Rangarajan, Rahil Shah and Aushik Srinivas exploited the conditions that were tailormade for them, while Abhinav Mukund, Dinesh Karthik and siblings B Aparajith and B Indrajith have ensured Badrinath's absence wasn't felt too much. M Vijay's century in the last game was also a boost for Tamil Nadu before the knockout stage.

It would be interesting to see which of the two teams uses the seamer-friendly conditions in Jaipur to their advantage.

With 475 runs from 13 innings, Abhinav Mukund had an average 2013-14 Ranji season. But the left-handed opening batsman has come back with a bang to lead Tamil Nadu's batting unit with 700-plus runs. If Abhinav continues his silken touch, Vidarbha's dream run may come to an end soon.

He has played for India A. He has won a Man-of-the-Match award in the IPL. Shrikant Wagh, however, has not yet been able to enter the league of consistent pace bowlers on the domestic circuit. This could well be the breakthrough season for the Vidarbha left-armer as he has scalped more than 30 wickets in the league stage.

Tamil Nadu: Abhinav Mukund (capt), M Vijay, U Sushil, B Aparajith, Dinesh Karthik (wk), R Prasanna, B Indrajith, L Balaji, Vijay Shankar, M Rangarajan, Rahil Shah, R Aushik Srinivas, M Shahrukh Khan, A Ashwin Crist, L Vignesh, Prasanth Parameswaran

Vidarbha: S Badrinath (capt), Faiz Fazal (vice-capt), Ganesh Satish, Shalabh Shrivastava, Amol Ubarhande, Ravi Jangid, Urvesh Patel, Rakesh Dhurv, Shrikant Wagh, Swapnil Bandiwar, Ravi Thakur, Akshay Wakhare, Sachin Kataria, Sumeet Ruikar, Yadvendra Tembhare.