Kerala captain Sachin Baby applauded the quality of his team after it batted out over a day to secure a draw against Madhya Pradesh in a Ranji Trophy match here at the Greenfield International Stadium on Sunday.
“We have played our best cricket against all teams this season. I believe we are in a strong position [in the standings] now. We last qualified for the knockouts six years ago and we want to get it done this time,” said Sachin after a riveting final hour of play, which saw Kerala hold out the away team with just two wickets left in hand.
Sachin offered an insight into Kerala’s batting plan going into the final day and praised the effort of Baba Aparajith, who braved a calf muscle injury to score an unbeaten 70-ball 26 to close out the result for his side.
“Our plan was not to play out the day, but go through it session by session. Yesterday, when we were one wicket down, we thought we would be in the game even if we lost two more wickets.
Unfortunately, we lost four wickets early on. I still had belief because we had Aparajith, who had to drop down the order because of the injury. But, he came out and showed his class,” adds Sachin.
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Sachin also confirmed that Aparajith will miss out on the side’s next game against Bihar, starting on January 30.
“I think it is a small [calf] tear. So he will be rested against Bihar. We need him to be ready,” says Sachin.
On the penultimate day, Kerala had opted for a defensive game plan by slowing down its over rate, which eventually resulted in Sachin being fined 40 per cent of his match fee, while his players lost 20 per cent each.
“We had a lot of time as we already had the first-innings lead in our kitty. We knew we had to bat again, so we had to delay it a bit. I think we bowled only around 50 overs till Tea yesterday and were 10 overs short.
If we had bowled at an attacking pace, we would have had to bat around 20 more overs in the chase. That is why we decided that it is ok to concede the fine as we gained time in return,” said Sachin.