Ranji Trophy: Nishant Sindhu’s 7-hour toil stands between Mumbai and win

The Haryana left-hander, part of 2022 India U19 World Cup winning team, is working towards realising his full potential

Despite taking a 160-run first innings lead, Mumbai weren’t able to run through Haryana on a pitch tailor made for the home spinners because of Nishant Sindhu’s resistance.

Nishant Sindhu slammed a century for Haryana against Mumbai (PTI)

Going into the final day of the Ranji Trophy Elite Group D encounter, the domestic giants are still in the driver’s seat, eight second innings wickets away from an innings win. If not, still with a fair chance of completing an outright win — Haryana (73/2) are 87 runs behind — if their spin trio of Tanush Kotian, Shams Mulani and Musheer Khan come out fresh and rested.

For that, they will have to go past 22-year-old Sindhu, who has so far denied Mumbai with seven hours of batting toil — 105* (251b, 8x4, 1x6) and 22* (59b, 4x4).

In Haryana’s first innings total of 270 in reply to Mumbai’s 430, Sindhu was a thorn in the home team’s plans, coming out to bat at No.3 and staying unbeaten. In sharp contrast to what one sees of the Gujarat Titans batter in IPL, for his seventh first-class hundred, the left-hander played out 251 balls against the constant probing by Mumbai’s spin trio on a red-soil pitch that afforded turn all day, and saw awkward bounce, when the spinners gave it a rip.

For Mumbai, Musheer Khan was in his element with the ball. Off-Spinner Tanush Kotian’s natural height constantly challenged the left-hander’s outside edge. Shams Mulani struggled for rhythm the most. Sindhu laid out his batting plan accordingly.

His only six of the innings was the slog sweep against left-arm orthodox Musheer with which he brought up his hundred. “I had to choose the left-arm spinner because it was not that easy to play shots against the off-spinner. My plan was that I would hit out in the last four balls of the over, but the ball was in the slot.”

Picking your bowler to strike is a learning from T20 cricket, but here with bowlers on the ascendancy it’s more a case of avoiding risks against bowlers better suited to exploit conditions. Even though Sindhu is yet to play an eye-catching IPL innings, being in high-quality team environments — he was with CSK for the 2023 and 2024 seasons and with GT for 2025 and 2026 — has enhanced the Rohtak batter’s game sense.

“What I have learned from legends like MS Dhoni and Ashish Nehra is to play to team requirements,” he said. “Because when you are young, you feel that your game is like this. But, it’s not like that,” the 22-year-old said.

Mumbai spinners constantly tempted Sindhu — giving the ball air and playing with the field, but Sindhu was content playing close to his body while smothering the spin.

“It is the mindset,” Sindhu said. “My process is that I play according to the demands of the team. I was not able to play big shots because many of our players were already out.”

Haryana play their home matches at Lahli where pacers usually dictate terms. And although, as Sindhu says, home pitches have started to take more spin, he was completely at home countering the extra bounce the pitch offered.

Since he posed with ICC silverware for the Yash Dhull-led World Cup winning U19 team, to many Sindhu hasn’t fully realised his potential with a middling first-class average. He candidly admits it. “I could have done better, 100 percent. But now I am trying to do what I couldn't do before.”

From that 2022 winning batch, Dhull, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Shaik Rasheed are all batters, high-on-potential, still evolving to become finished articles. On the final day’s play against Mumbai on Wednesday, Sindhu has the opportunity to craft a milestone innings that would demand adroitness against spin and unwavering focus.