Vidarbha becomes only the third team to defend Ranji Trophy and Irani Cup

Rest of India (RoI) tried but could not stop Vidarbha from retaining Irani Cup as the Faiz Fazal-led side won the title for the second time in a row by the first-innings lead at the in Nagpur on Saturday to cap off a yet another fantastic season.

After Ajinkya Rahane-led RoI asked Vidarbha to chase down 280-run target, Ganesh Satish’s 87 and Atharva Taide’s 72 powered Vidarbha to 269/5, 11 runs adrift of the target. (ALSO READ: Vidarbha claim second successive Irani Cup on first-innings lead against Rest of India)

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However, Vidarbha, who had restricted RoI to 330 despite Hanuma Vihari’s 114 and Mayank Agarwal’s 95, secured a 95-run lead in the first inning following Akshay Karnewar’s 102.

While Vihari once again scored a ton (183 not out) in the second innings, with skipper Rahane scored 87 and Shreyas Iyer chipped in with 62 not out, that eventually was not enough to stop Vidarbha from winning the title.

With this win, Vidarbha became only the third team in the history of Indian domestic cricket to defend the Ranji Trophy and Irani Cup.  The two other teams who had achieved this feat earlier were Mumbai and Karnataka. (ALSO READ: Irani Cup champions Vidarbha donate prize money to families of martyred CRPF jawans in Pulwama attack)

Last year too, Vidarbha had managed to win the title on the basis of first-innings total. Wasim Jaffer had scored a daddy hundred (286) as Vidarbha declared the innings after putting up 800 runs on the board. declaring their first innings

While Vidarbha was without the services of veteran Jaffer and speedster Umesh Yadav for this year’s all important clash, the Chandrakant Pandit-coached side still managed to up their game to retain the title to complete yet another successful season.

Brief Scores: Vidarbha 425 (Akshat Karnewar 102, Akshay Wadkar 73; Rahul Chahar 4/112) & 269/5 (Ganesh Satish 87, Atharva Taide 72; Rahul Chahar 2/116) beat Rest of India 330 (Hanuma Vihari 114, Mayank Agarwal 95; Akshay Wakhare 3/62) & 374/3d (Hanuma Vihari 180*, Ajinkya Rahane 87; Aditya Sarwate 2/141) on the basis of first-inning lead.