Ranji Trophy: Vidarbha lift maiden Ranji Trophy title

Bengaluru, January 1: On the first day of the New Year, Vidarbha wrote a glorious chapter in their cricketing history, beating Delhi by nine wickets to capture their maiden Ranji Trophy title at the Holkar Stadium, Indore, on Monday.

Once they had taken a massive 252-run first innings lead, Vidarbha had almost sealed the title. But they applied the coup de grace in style on the fourth day of the match.

Resuming from 528 for seven, Vidarbha added only 19 runs to the total while losing all the remaining wickets. But that little passage did no harm to Vidarbha because they had already walked so far ahead of Delhi on the third day itself.

There was no point in Delhi trying to hang around with little less than two days remaining in the match. They needed quick runs on the board to give a meaningful challenge to Vidarbha.

(Watch the winning moment below)

The nature of the task reflected in Delhi's approach in the second innings. There was a sense of urgency in their batting - Gautam Gambhir's strike rate for 36 stood at 97.30, Dhruv Shorey made 62 at over 43, Nitish Rana made 64 at 56.64, Rishabh Pant's 32 came 88.89 and Vikas Mishra hammered 34 at 106.25.

It was the kind of batting Delhi needed at the hour but the Vidarbha attack has too much quality in its ranks to let things go out of the hands.

Congratulations to each and every member of the Vidarbha Ranji Team on winning the 2017-18 Ranji Trophy.

— VVS Laxman (@VVSLaxman281) January 1, 2018

Congratulations to the new Ranji Champions 2017/18 #VIDARBHA well done my friend #Akshay urf Mukesh 😜 Top effort by this young fella #Gurbani #RanjiTrophyFinal #Bsports proud clothing partners & sponsors pic.twitter.com/7CKNfRnbwf

— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) January 1, 2018

Rajneesh Gurbani, Akshay Wakhare and Aditya Sarvate took nine wickets between them to keep Delhi under check. They went for a few runs of course, but the wickets they fetched suitably compensated for the high economy rate.

WATCH highlights of Akshay Wadkar's patient 263-ball 133-run knock to put Vidarbha on top in the @Paytm #RanjiTrophy 2017-18 #Final #DELvVID - https://t.co/oiQaCI5AqS

— BCCI Domestic (@BCCIdomestic) January 1, 2018

When teams like Gujarat and Vidarbha win the Ranji Trophy, they show how much ability exists in non-traditional cricket centres too. Fantastic for our game.

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) January 1, 2018

Delhi managed 280 before getting bundled out. All Vidarbha had to make was 29 runs to emerge champions. They did that with minimum fuss for the loss of skipper Faiz Fazal. Wasim Jaffer, a veteran of many Ranji wins with Mumbai, brought the winnings runs. Time to raise a toast for the heroes from Vidarbha.