Iyer ton secures draw for Mumbai

Shreyas Iyer made the most of an early reprieve to score his second big hundred of the season and help Mumbai salvage a draw against Madhya Pradesh.

Thanks to Iyer's unbeaten 142 and his vital partnerships with Aditya Tare, Siddhesh Lad and Sarfaraz Khan, Mumbai tallied 311 for 4 after being asked to bat out the last day at the Wankhede Stadium.

The MP team management had indicated on the penultimate evening that they would have a go at the Mumbai batsmen in order to earn maximum points. They did exactly that and declared at their overnight score of 538 for 7. This put the onus on Mumbai who had to avoid a collapse similar to the second day and not put themselves under pressure after conceding a first-innings lead of 134.

Tare and Akhil Herwadkar started steadily but Puneet Datey induced an edge off Herwadkar to Naman Ojha behind the wicket. Three overs later, Avesh Khan got some bite off the track and forced an edge off Iyer's bat. It flew to gully but Ankit Sharma failed to hold on. The stylish batsman was on 10 then and Mumbai were 41 for 1.

Once he got a reprieve, Iyer put his head down and played cautiously for a while. Tare then stepped on the gas, driving the medium-pacers handsomely to register his maiden fifty of the season. Just as it looked like Mumbai were securing their safety, Tare threw away his second good start of the match with an edge to Harpreet Singh in the slips in the last over before lunch.

At 108 for 2, Mumbai required the middle order to see them through to tea and seal a point. Thirteen balls into the second session, Mumbai captain Suryakumar Yadav mis-timed a pull shot and offered Yogesh Rawat a simple catch in the circle. MP had a chance to capitalise on the wobble but their captain Devendra Bundela missed the trick.

With the pitch remaining hard, there wasn't much turn on offer, so the need was to set aggressive fields for spinners and entice batsmen into false strokes. Bundela, however, allowed both his spinners to bowl to defensive fields.

While left-arm spinner Ankit preferred to consistently bowl over the wicket on the leg stump, offspinner Jalaj Saxena bowled a middle-stump line instead of pitching outside off. This offered numerous scoring opportunities to Iyer and Lad and the duo didn't falter.

By the time Lad top-edged a sweep off Ankit to be caught at short fine leg - an outcome of the bowler's ploy - it was too late for MP. Lad and Iyer had batted out the first hour after lunch and with Iyer having already crossed his second first-class ton, MP had no hopes of staging another Mumbai collapse.

Sarfaraz, playing only his second first-class match, then went after both the specialist spinners and forced MP to drop their guard. Both the teams shook hands once Sarfaraz raised his maiden fifty in the first over of the mandatory overs.