Ranji Trophy: Record-breaking Mumbai set to add another feather to cap with 500th match in tournament

At 09:30 am on Thursday, 9 November, when Aditya Tare leads his team on the Wankhede baize, the 29-year-old will take the proverbial giant leap in India’s cricketing history. It will be the 500th time a Mumbai captain would walk out for the toss, making the most successful first-class team in the country also its most experienced. Mumbai won the inaugural edition of Ranji Trophy when Laxmidas Purshottamdas Jai led (then) Bombay to the summit against Northern India in 1934-35. It kicked off the enviable winning habit that continued post India’s independence. [caption id=“attachment_4200093” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Mumbai captain Aditya Tare. BCCI[/caption] From 1955-56 to 1976-77, Mumbai won 20 out of 22 titles, including a 15-title run from 1958–59 to 1972–73. Mumbai have now won 41 trophies, easily the most in competition’s 83-year history. No other team has won more than eight, and ten of those finals were won by an innings. Mumbai have traditionally been a conveyor belt of high-class batsmen, with the likes of Vijay Merchant, Vijay Manjreker, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar and Sachin Tendulkar representing India with distinction. Among the current crop, Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane have cemented their place in India’s limited-overs and Test team respectively. Another Mumbai batsman, Shreyas Iyer, is the most recent inductee in India’s T20 side, and true to tradition, he has shown enough spark in his three-year-old first-class career so far. Iyer holds the Mumbai record for most runs in a single season. The right-hander plundered 1321 runs in 2015-16 edition and was instrumental in Mumbai’s march to the title. Iyer’s tally is second only to VVS Laxman’s 1415 runs that the Hyderabad legend aggregated in the 1999-2000 season. Batting has always been Mumbai’s strong suit, with local red soil doing its bit in preparing the batsmen with turn and bounce. The Mumbai school of batsmanship is built on the premise of ‘khadoos’ batting; one that encourages the batsmen to dig in and put a price on their wicket. Not surprisingly, two Mumbai batsmen lead Ranji Trophy’s all-time run-scorers’ list. Wasim Jaffer, who played 31 Tests for India, leads the chart with 10,274 runs, followed by Amol Muzumdar with 9,202 runs. Muzumdar, whose misfortune of never being picked for India despite a stellar record is well documented, scored a majestic 260 on his Ranji debut, making him the world record holder for the highest-ever score by a player on first-class debut. So far, 54 batsmen have scored a double century for Mumbai, with five of them going on to get a triple. Sanjay Manjrekar’s 377 against Hyderabad in 1990-91 season remains the highest individual score by a Mumbai batsman in Ranji Trophy. Vinod Kambli holds the record for most centuries for Mumbai. The southpaw has crossed the three-figure mark on 23 occasions. He is followed by Vinoo Mankad (22), Sunil Gavaskar and Amol Muzumdar (20 each). Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy dominance is relatively unmatched, and only New South Wales, who have won Sheffield Shield 46 times, comes close. England’s County Championships, that started in 1890, has been dominated by Yorkshire who has won the title 33 times.