Ranji Trophy: Musheer Khan spins Mumbai to pole position

MUMBAI: Musheer Khan continues to make up for lost time after the serious car accident that sidelined him in Sept 2024. Producing a memorable allround performance that is bound to catch the eye of the national selectors, the 21-yearold became only the sixth Mumbai cricketer to score a century and claim a fivewicket haul in the same first-class match, putting Mumbai on the verge of their third outright win of the season in their Ranji Trophy Elite Group D clash against Haryana at the MCA ground in BKC on Wednesday.After making 109 at No. 3, the left-arm spinner returned figures of 6/85 from 31 overs, including seven maidens, as Haryana were bowled out for 270 in 107.5 overs and forced to follow on. At stumps, Haryana were 73 for 2 in their second innings, still 87 runs short of making Mumbai bat again.Before Musheer, only Madab Raiji, Dattu Phadkar, Vinoo Mankad, Polly Umrigar and Ravi Shastri had achieved the rare Mumbai double of a century and a five-for in the same first-class match.“I’ve been an allrounder from junior cricket. If I bat for an hour or an hour and ahalf in practice, I make sure I bowl around 120 deliveries too,” Musheer said.“I was actually a proper bowler when I was younger. I didn’t have much power in my batting then. At this level, though, it took me a couple of years to establish myself as abowler because we had senior bowlers.”Rain hurts Delhi’s chancesIn Ranchi, not a single ball was bowled on the third day of Delhi’s third round encounter against Jharkhand, which has effectively ended the visiting team’s chances of earning an outright win. Jharkhand were in a spot of bother at 131 for 4 at stumps on the second day after Delhi posted 515/5 declared.RANJI TROPHY: ROUND 3; DAY 3GROUP A:In Vadodara:Baroda 616 vs J&K 303 (Q Iqbal 121, U Nazir 101, Atit Seth 4/60) & (following on) 8/1;In Puducherry: UP 333 vs Puducherry 172 (Z Ansari 4/41) & (follow on) 39/0;In Nagpur:Goa 220 & 41/1 vs Vidarbha 442/8 (D Shorey 168).GROUP B:In Rajkot: Assam 281 & 65/7 (Parth Bhut 6/7) vs Saurashtra 387 (H Kotak 80 batting; M Thakur 4/126);In Mysuru: Tripura 194 & 98/3 vs Karnataka 490/9 decl (K Nair 63, R Patil 72);In Secunderabad: Punjab 431 & 57/0 vs Hyderabad 380 (A Reddy 97; Vihaan Malhotra 4/15).GROUP C:In Mangalapuram:Bengal 350 &198 (J Saxena 5/70) vs Kerala 141 (P Pramanik 4/44, M Shami 3/35) & 53/4 (P Pramanik 4/21);In Pune:Gujarat 223 & 227/3 (A Desai 132*) vs Maharashtra 330.GROUP D:In Mumbai:Mumbai 430 vs Haryana 270 (N Sindhu 105 not out; Musheer 6/85) & 73/2 (f/o) (Musheer Khan 1/6);In Chennai:Railways 184 & 108 (R Sai Kishore 4/39, J Hemchudeshan 3/21) lost to Tamil Nadu 165 & 130/5 (A Siddarth 56 not out; Toufik Mondal 4/50) by 5 wickets. Points: Tamil Nadu 6, Railways 0;In Chandigarh:Chandigarh 685/5 decl lead Himachal Pradesh 340/3 (I Mahajan 121) by 345 runs;In Dehradun:Rajasthan 272 & 290/5 dec (K Lamba 100 not out) lead Uttarakhand 194 & 38/0 by 331 runs.Get the latest Sports News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.