The sigh of relief in the Tamil Nadu camp when they pulled off a draw against Vidarbha in Coimbatore may have echoed all the way to Chennai. For a team that started the Ranji Trophy season with a two-week long camp in Coimbatore, including centre-wicket training sessions, they are without a win in two matches here. They suffered an innings defeat against Jharkhand and managed to avoid another against the defending champions, who through the four days, showed the gulf in class in the most brutal fashion.
On the eve of the game, when Vidarbha began their warm-up drills, they did so with the ‘Tum Hi Ho’ song from Aashiqui 2 blurting in the speaker placed outside their dressing room. The romance between Vidarbha and red-ball cricket was hard to miss. Like Tamil Nadu, they were without four first eleven players, but in contrast to the hosts, they relished the challenge.
It is an outfit that understands that to go all the way to lift the title, they need to suffer in the middle. Over after over, they kept coming hard at Tamil Nadu. It tested their patience and discipline. But none could challenge their resolve even at the end of a long, tiring day. From the moment Nichiket Bhute broke the 179-run stand between Pradosh Ranjan Paul and Baba Indrajith on the penultimate over of Day 1, they hardly looked back. Coming into Day 4, with a 210-lead to operate with, they never gave up, until they ran out of time at 4:40pm, on a pitch that seemed to have lost its life with Baba Indrajith holding fort for 189 deliveries to remain unbeaten on 77 and R Sai Kishore ensuring there was no more collapse.
Cracks in the wall
Tamil Nadu may have walked away with one point that takes their tally to four from three matches, but there is a huge concern that needs immediate attention. Leaving aside their second match against Nagaland, in two game here, where they have lost 36 wickets, 13 of them have been bowled. Out of the 13, only one has been a tail-ender. Twelve of their specialist batsmen in four innings, on pitches with runs to show, have paid the price for playing the wrong line – failure to play the line of the delivery and playing beside the line. Apart from Indrajith, who inside-edged onto the stumps in the first innings against Vidarbha, the rest have let their defence to be breached. That none of them have been beaten by pace, but by slight seam movement from seamers who deliver between 120-130kmph has thrown open their technical flaws in the most brutal fashion.
Tamil Nadu players in action during Ranji Trophy 2025 match against Vidarbha in Coimbatore. (PHOTO: TNCA)
“That’s becoming too much into my mind,” M Senthilnathan the head coach said of the bowled dismissals. “I put it as my main concern because on a stump line, I’ve not seen so many dismissals in my life. It is not one game, it is happening consistently. You need to play the line. Either they go across and take it on the leg for LBW or to avoid that they go beside the line and get bowled. It is an area of concern,” Senthilnathan said.
If left-handed opener Khumar tried to stay beside the line of a delivery pitched on leg-side and saw the middle and off stump uprooted, in both innings Shahrukh Khan paid the price for trying to play from the crease instead of going forward. In the first game, he left a huge gap between bat and the pad to be bowled by a medium-pacer. “I can’t blame these boys for the way they’re playing. Because, to be very frank, in our First Division league, there are hardly any fast bowlers. Here, they play only fast bowlers, about 70%. You can find so many technical flaws. They have not played more than four overs of fast bowlers. So you can’t expect them to go play here straight away,” Senthilnathan added.
Their struggles aren’t just restricted to batting. Even with the ball, TN pacers have struggled to make any openings. While left-arm seamer Gurjapneet Singh breathes promise, he was unavailable for this game with an injury, which meant the 34-year-old Sandeep Warrier had to take the workload alongside the wayward Trilok Nag. In both the innings, Vidarbha relied on their pacers who picked up 12 of the 16 wickets, whereas TN seamers had just 3 to show.
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“In league matches (three-day games), we hardly have any kind of a fast bowling wicket,” Senthilnathan, who was the head coach of MRF Pace Foundation for more than a decade, said. “You ask everybody, they (fast bowlers) bowl three overs and stand in square leg. All turning tracks. If you don’t bowl more overs, you can’t hit the right length. Suddenly, can you come and do it in a match? It comes by the rhythm.”
Given these glaring holes that they managed to escape with a one point brought a sigh of relief while Vidarbha rued a huge opportunity to take 7 points with them.
Brief scores: Tamil Nadu 291 & 233/6 (Baba Indrajith 77 n.o, Athish SR 46; Praful Hinge 4/60) drew with Saurashtra 501
