Yashasvi Jaiswal is one young player who is as serious about the longer format as he is about playing for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL. His hunger for runs is evident from three hundreds in four innings of the quarter-finals and semi-finals. Prithvi Shaw is not the typical khadoos (stubborn) batsman of Mumbai, but a batsman who adopts a strategy like Virender Sehwag to dominate any attack.
Apart from these, Mumbai has Armaan Jaffer, Suved Parkar and Hardik Tamor who know how to take advantage of the opportunity. Mumbai have always had a formidable batting line-up which can trouble the opposition but this time its two spinners, left-arm spinner Shams Mulani (37 wickets and 292 runs) and off-spinner Tanush Kotian (18 wickets and 236 runs) bowled. Not only did he perform well in batting as well. Madhya Pradesh, however, has been one of the best team in recent times and it is only through disciplined performance under Pandit’s supervision that they have reached the finals of tournaments like Ranji Trophy.
In the absence of Venkatesh Iyer in batting and fast bowler Avesh Khan in bowling, players like Kumar Karthikeya, Himanshu Mantri and Akshat Raghuvanshi played their roles well. Apart from these, Mumbai will have to be on guard against Rajat Patidar who is capable of turning the match around with his batting. Madhya Pradesh have two good spinners in Karthikeya and Sarshan Jain who can create trouble for Mumbai’s strong batting.
