Ranji: Mumbai sniff 38th championship win

Vinayak Samant (113) slammed his maiden first class century, while teammate Rohit Sharma (108) struck his second of the match as Mumbai batted Uttar Pradesh out of the final and virtually assured itself of its 38th Ranji Trophy title here on Thursday.

Aware that their 157-run first innings lead was enough to win the title in case of a drawn match, Mumbai adopted a safety-first approach and batted on and on till they were all out for 367.

UP would require a miracle of sorts to chase down the mammoth 525-run target with just one day left.

The only sour note in Mumbai's superior display was Sachin Tendulkar's failure in both the innings. The star batsman, who scored a duck in the first innings and was battling a viral fever, batted at number seven in the second essay only to score four runs and fall to Piyush Chawla.

Apart from Samant and Rohit, captain Wasim Jaffer shone for Mumbai with the bat, scoring 85.

Rohit became only the sixth batsman to score two centuries in a Ranji Trophy final.

For UP, Piyush Chawla and Parvinder Singh scalped three wickets apiece.

Resuming on 130 for no loss, Mumbai soon realised that the UP bowlers were not in a mood to throw in the towel.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar removed Jaffer in the 43rd over just before the opening stand was about to reach the 150-mark and suddenly wicket started tumbling as Mumbai, from 146 for no loss, slumped to 241 for six.