Madhya Pradesh beat Mumbai by 6 wickets, won the Ranji Trophy title 

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Chandrakant Pandit says I was a little more excited and emotional

Chandrakant Pandit was satisfied with the devotion shown by skipper Aditya Shrivastra all through the competition and returned to an incident when he came to him and asked the most ideal way to design around the cricketing schedule for his marriage.

“Alex Ferguson of Ranji Trophy,” tweeted Dinesh Karthik in recognition of Chandrakant Pandrit, who supervised a 6th successful mission in India’s premier first-class tournament. 

Pandit had recently come out on top for Ranji Trophy championships with Mumbai (2002-03, 2003-04, and 2015-16) and with Vidarbha (2017-18, and 2018-19) as the head coach, however, Madhya Pradesh’s maiden success on Sunday saw the generally indifferent Pandit exposed his profound side.

For it was at the very Chinnaswamy Stadium in April 1999 that Pandit, then skipper of Madhya Pradesh, lost a Ranji Trophy final to Karnataka. Over twenty years after the fact, having taken up the head coach’s job with Madhya Pradesh, it was a sweet recovery.

Speaking at the press conference after the match, Pandit said:

“Every trophy gives you satisfaction but this is special because 23 years back, I being the captain I couldn’t do it but today I’m very proud about Aditya [Shrivastava] that he has done it. I always felt I left back something to give to Madhya Pradesh and that was one of the reasons I was a little more excited and emotional about it to get that trophy back to Madhya Pradesh.”

Pandit was satisfied with the devotion shown by skipper Aditya Shrivastava all through the competition and returned to an incident when the 28-year-old came to him and asked the most ideal way to design around the cricketing schedule for his marriage.

“I remember when he was supposed to get married and he asked me – ‘Sir, what date (should I get married)?’ I said ‘only in June, that is the possibility for you to get married, that too (a break of) only two days or maybe three days. You will not get time to go on your honeymoon. We had started our preparations as well,”

recollected Pandit, who was lavish in his praise of Shrivastava.

“I’ve handled many captains, everybody has a good rapport with me, everybody has a good combination with me. But I think the rapport and combination with him (Shrivastava) are entirely different. He’s the only captain who has spent hours and hours with me in the room…Winning the trophy is different, but the way he has implemented all strategies and planning, any messages going to him and he’s implemented very nicely. I think that helped the team play well. Of course, he has his ideas but in our discussions which we’ve had regularly, he has implemented them on the ground. He has been a wonderful captain for Madhya Pradesh,”

said Pandit.

Pandit revealed that they were having regular conversations with the players to make sure that they were motivated to play red-ball cricket.

“It’s very difficult to change their minds but they were getting opportunities and we cannot deny that. Fortunately for us players like Venkatesh Iyer, Avesh Khan, Rajat Patidar, Arshad Khan, and Kartikeya, they’ve been in touch with me regularly during the IPL. And that could help me to motivate them and to make them understand that this is a prestigious tournament.

“The mindset was not to be changed towards white-ball cricket but you have to come back immediately and work with the red ball. So I think that kind of motivation, we kept on giving them. Aditya was talking to them, they were trying to find out what was going on. So certain things were discussed regularly, which has helped us to keep them in this format as well,”

said Pandit.

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