Terrific feeling, says Dravid

Nice to see things looking up

“It’s a terrific feeling,” the Karnataka skipper said. “It’s great for Karnataka cricket and great for a lot of the young boys in the team. We have had some tough years in the middle, so it’s nice to see that we made it to the final and things are beginning to look up a little bit.”

Patting his young side for charting this path to the title round, he went on, “Throughout the season, the youngsters have done really well. They have been given a lot of confidence by the team management and the selectors, and they have repaid that faith with both bat and ball. Other than me and Sunil (Joshi), everyone is under 25 years of age. It’s a really young side by any standards.
Hopefully, if they keep performing and keep doing well, we will have some good successes over the next couple of years.”

Dravid will most likely miss the final against Mumbai beginning on Monday, but he said that wouldn’t mean the end of his team’s chances. “You must remember I have played only four games this year. Of the four games I did not play, Karnataka had three outright wins. I have full confidence that the boys will put up a good show against Mumbai. The boys have got to go out enjoy themselves,” the former Indian skipper said.

“In some ways, we’ve got nothing to lose. They have to go out and play good cricket, not worry about who they are playing. Sure, Mumbai is a good team, they play good cricket, they’ve got people who have had success in Ranji Trophy finals.
But what matters is how you perform on the day. Our guys are playing some very good cricket this year. I hope they put up a good performance. If they do that, you might win some games, you might lose some games but that doesn’t really matter.”

Calling this a ‘truly satisfying’ season, Dravid remarked, “I was telling the boys today, I have played with three generations of Karnataka cricket. I have played with the like of Kirmani and Carlton Saldhana, then obviously with the likes of Srinath, Kumble, Prasad and Joshi. Now to have played with the likes of the Pandeys and the Uthappas, I have played with three generations. There have been some ups and downs in this period but this season has been truly satisfying. It’s been good to see a young group come through. Because they are young, they are going to make mistakes and they are going to face some disappointments, but at least your can look ahead and see that over three or four years, they can be consistently successful.”

Score Board
KARNATAKA (I Innings): 575/7 decl in 176 overs
UTTAR PRADESH (I Innings): 208 all out in 74.2 overs

KARNATAKA (II Innings, O/n: 43/3): Robin Uthappa lbw Chawla 18 (65m, 46b, 2x4), KB Pawan lbw Chawla 16 (74m, 62b, 2x4), Ganesh Satish c Amir b RP Singh 18 (66m, 49b, 3x4), Manish Pandey b Chawla 4 (6m, 4b, 1x4), Amit Verma lbw Srivastava 26 (130m, 109b, 3x4), CM Gautam (not out) 100 (206m, 169b, 15x4), R Vinay Kumar b RP Singh 38 (98m, 70b, 3x4, 3x6), Sunil Joshi c Chawla b RP Singh 4 (20m, 11b, 1x4), A Mithun lbw RP Singh 0 (3m, 3b), Rahul Dravid (not out) 0 (4m, 0b).
Extras (B-19, LB-3, NB-1) 23. Total (for 8 wkts decl, 87 overs) 247.

Fall of wickets: 1-34 (Uthappa), 2-35 (Pawan), 3-39 (Pandey), 4-66 (Satish), 5-117 (Verma), 6-229 (Vinay), 7-241 (Joshi), 8-241 (Mithun).

Bowling: Rudra Pratap Singh 20-6-47-4, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 8-0-31-0, Praveen Gupta 16-5-29-0, Piyush Chawla 26-8-72-3, Praveen Kumar 3-3-0-0, Tanmay Srivastava 12-1-40-1 (nb-1), Rohit Prakash 2-0-6-0.

UTTAR PRADESH (II Innings): Tanmay Srivastava b Arvind 6 (26m, 25b), Rohit Prakash (not out) 7 (44m, 27b, 1x4), Shivakant Shukla (not out) 7 (16m, 20b, 1x4). Extras (B-1, LB-1) 2. Total (for 1 wkt, 12 overs) 22.

Fall of wicket: 1-13 (Srivastava).
Bowling: R Vinay Kumar 3-1-3-0, S Arvind 5-1-10-1, Robin Uthappa 2-0-6-0, Manish Pandey 1-0-1-0, Amit Verma 1-1-0-0.