Off-cutters: Ranji Trophy Trivia ahead of Mumbai's 500th game

Ashok Mankad had an outstanding career in the Ranji Trophy, beginning in 1963-64. In his 19-season tenure under the lion-crested Mumbai cap, Mankad played in 13 Ranji Trophy finals. The one finale loss he witnessed was in his last game for Mumbai - against Karnataka in 1982-83 at Wankhede Stadium where the visitors won by virtue of a 17-run first innings lead.

That Sudhir Naik's Mumbai team won the Ranji Trophy despite the absence of five key players who were in the West Indies in 1971 is well documented. However, Mumbai also won without five regulars in 1981 when Eknath Solkar's young team beat Bishan Singh Bedi's Delhi with Sunil Gavaskar, Karsan Ghavri, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sandeep Patil and Ravi Shastri in New Zealand.

Mumbai and Maharashtra were always considered arch-rivals, but Rajasthan would consider Mumbai as their nemesis simply because they contested seven finals against the kings of domestic cricket and couldn't win even one of them. In the 1963-64 final, Rajasthan had as many as seven players who figured on the local cricket scene in Mumbai - Vijay Manjrekar, GR Sunderam (ex-Mumbai players), Hanumant Singh, Raj Singh (Dungarpur), Salim Durrani, Kishen Rungta and Kailash Gattani.

Cricket lends itself to all sorts of characters. Vasu Paranjape was one. As 12th man of Mumbai in the late 1950s, Paranjape encountered a rather fussy teammate when he went out with limejuice during a drinks break in a Ranji Trophy game. The batsman wanted coffee instead. When Paranjape brought out coffee in the next interval, he wanted limejuice so in his next visit to the crease, Paranjape carried some sort of a menu card for his teammate to choose from. Of course, his seniors back in the pavilion were not impressed.

Umesh Kulkarni went on India's 1967-68 tour of Australia and New Zealand. However, after those disappointing tours, he never figured in a Ranji Trophy game for Mumbai. Some oddity this!