Aditya Tare concedes that Abhishek Nayar is Mumbai’s crisis man

Aditya Tare, the incumbent skipper of the Mumbai Ranji Trophy side has heaped praise on 33-year old all-rounder Abhishek Nayar following the latter’s ton in the first encounter against Tamil Nadu. Mumbai secured a hard-fought victory wherein they secured a narrow 2-wicket win. Tare was quick to point out the impact made by the experienced Abhishek Nayar who stood up to the plate and ensure a Mumbai win.

“One person you can bank on during crisis is Abhishek Nayar,” Tare told ESPNcricinfo. “He is a specialist when it comes to playing under pressure and he’s done it a lot of times in the past. The wicket had already started to deteriorate. It would viciously bounce or keep low because the cracks had widened. It was always never going to be a cakewalk for us. I thought we did pretty well to hold our nerves.”

Nayar, who turned 33 during the course of the match went on to heap praise on Chandrakant Pandit and Rahil Shah. “Chandu sir [coach Chandrakant Pandit] sent me up the order because their left-arm spinner, Rahil [Shah], was bowling really well,” Nayar explained. “So, they sent me to try and get him out of the attack and get some runs flowing. The mindset was that I have to play aggressively and take them on.”

“I expected five-six runs from each one of them and if they could collectively get 10, I could get the remaining 40,” he said.

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“I wasn’t sure whether or not we will be able to sustain for one more over because the ball was doing quite a bit and they were bowling well,” he said. “So, I decided to take a chance in the first ball of the over. Because I knew what he was bowling to me – he was bowling that to me for quite a while – I set myself up for that. I just gave it a full throttle, hoping that even if I didn’t time it, the ball would still go out of the ground.”

Speaking about the wicket, Abhishek Nayar added, “It was basically a very green pitch. Initially, there was a very thick covering of grass that made it very tough for stroke-play. What made things more difficult was the outfield was super slow, so getting boundaries was not easy. In normal grounds where you get four runs, you get two for it. Later on, the cracks widened up on the pitch, so it was quite uneven.

“In many situations, many teams would give up, or they wouldn’t know how to win, but our history is such that there have been so many games which we have almost lost, but the Mumbai team has won it,” he said. “There is a lot of faith in one another and not giving up. That’s what we showed today.”

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