Mumbai in command after Nayar, Tare fifties

Captain Aditya Tare and Abhishek Nayar, Mumbai's chief crisis managers this season, roused the lower-middle order with a 121-run stand to nudge their team past Tamil Nadu's first-innings total. Once the primary target of 306 was achieved, Mumbai's lower order, piloted by Shardul Thakur's half-century, proceeded to drive the lead past 100, and left Tamil Nadu jaded and in despair.

Thakur first shared a 44-run partnership with Balwinder Sandhu (32) for the eighth wicket before adding 14 runs in the company of Akshay Girap. Thakur continued to grind it out with the last man, Vijay Gohil, and completed his fifth first-class fifty. He put on 27 runs with Gohil, who resisted 36 balls for one run.

Tamil Nadu wouldn't have known in the morning, but it was a day of false dawns for them. The first of those arrived in the fourth over when Shreyas Iyer (36) threw his hands at Vijay Shankar's delivery outside off, and was caught behind. Before he got out, Iyer played some crunching drives down the ground and through the leg side, and scored a boundary in each of the first three overs of the morning. Tamil Nadu had cause to rejoice in his dismissal, but the sight of Nayar and Tare together would have tempered any excitement.

What followed was a thoroughly gripping session with Tamil Nadu placing "the bait", as Tare put it later, and the batsmen not falling for it. Tare was comfortable gliding and cutting the ball, so Tamil Nadu captain Abhinav Mukund installed two gullies - one closer and the other slightly deeper - and a deep point to cut off his strong zone. After Nayar slashed one through gully, the same field was replicated for him as well. There was also left-arm spinner Aushik Srinivas, who followed up his stifling act on Monday with a 11-over spell that yielded only 21 runs. Tare called his spell "brilliant", and with Shankar reversing the ball at the other end, he said it was hard for the batsmen to break free.

Nayar, however, cashed in whenever he could - on a couple of occasions the seamers bowled full, he creamed them down the ground for boundaries. While Nayar and Tare began to pinch a few tight singles and interspersed them with the odd boundary, left-arm seamer T Natarajan attempted to soften them up with a string of good bouncers. But, Tamil Nadu's fielding was sloppy and lethargic. First, B Indrajith dropped Nayar on 52, off the bowling off his twin brother, B Aparajith. In the next over, when Natarajan got Tare to fend a sharp, rising delivery, Aparajith, at gully, didn't go for the catch after the ball lobbed up.

Aparajith, though, was stringing together a good spell with the ball, and got Nayar lbw with a grubber soon after. Natarajan was finally rewarded for his persistence, getting Tare, whose uppish drive was snared at cover. However, Thakur and Sandhu, on either side of tea, knuckled down to beat Tamil Nadu at the attritional cricket they were trying to produce.

"We just felt we had to play intelligent cricket and grind and play the balls in our areas, but they did unsettle us a bit with their bowling," Tare said later. "Obviously the scoreboard looks good, but it could have been much better. We had the opportunity to bat them out, but from 190 for 5, the way we recovered was good.

"The lower order has added a lot of value, with the way Shardul and Ballu [Balwinder] played. Mumbai always have added runs for the last five wickets, and that's how Mumbai win matches in crucial stages. That tradition of scoring runs down the order is something that we should continue because it puts the opposition down."

Abhinav, for his part, said his team was quite happy playing what he called "boring cricket". "We were looking to play some tough cricket, and we have played that sort of cricket throughout the year," he said. "In Rajkot, against Bengal, we gave away only 190 runs in one day and took three wickets. This team is happy doing stuff like that. With their lower order, our goal was to remain patient and not give too many runs. Again, we should have batted at the end of the day at least 10-15 overs at least, but unfortunately that didn't happen."

He also defended his decision to delay taking the second new ball - Tamil Nadu didn't opt for one until the completion of the mandatory 100 overs. "It was a no-brainer to delay the hard ball. Even yesterday, the hard ball was going for runs. I delayed it because Aparajith was bowling well and troubling Nayar. I think he bowled quite well."

Both Tare and Abhinav felt their respective sides would go hard at each other on the final two days. "It is going to be a cat-and-mouse game," Abhinav said.