Mumbai seek to rule Rest of India

Star-studded Rest Of India will take on last year's Ranji Trophy Champion Mumbai in the five-day Irani Trophy cricket match to be played in Rajkot from Saturday.

Rest Of India Captain Mohammed Kaif, aware of the domestic dominance of the 37-time Ranji Trophy winners, said, "This is a good batting track, which might be helping spinners later, but we need good start to put big scores."

He said most of players form his team have been playing together for India 'A' and so they know their strength and weakness, but "we have to start well".

"Being together for past few days, we know what is our strength and weakness," he said.

The players have done well against Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa; India 'A' having lost just a single one-day match against Srilanka.

"We have yet to decide whether to go with five or four bowlers, but we will decide it later in the day," Kaif said.

Meanwhile, Mumbai captain Amol Muzumdar said his team had some new faces and it world work as the surprise element.

"We know how Kaif, Chopra, Raina and Badrinath batted and how Munaf, Randeb, Mishra and Ozha bowl, but our opponents have no idea about our style, which will help us in the game," Muzumdar said.

"The young players are very talented and I'm fortunate to lead them," he added.

However, he said he was not happy with the schedule of the Irani Cup and added that last year's performance should not be considered for the season's opener game.

Teams:

Rest of India: Mohd Kaif (captain), Parthiv Patel (vice captain, wk), Akash Chopra, Cheteshwar Pujara, Manoj Tiwari, S Badrinath, Suresh Raina, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Pragyan Ozha, Amit Mishra, Yomahesh, Randeb Bose and Arjun Yadav.

Mumbai: Amol Muzumdar (captain), Wasim Jaffer (vice captain), Sahil Kukreja, Vinayak Mane, Ajinkya Rahane, Prashan Naik, Hiken Shah, Ajit Agarkar, Vikrant Yellegati, Iqbal Abdullah, Rajesh Verma, Dhaval Kulkarni, Avishkar Salvi, Omkar Gaurav (wk) and Abhishek Nair.

Umpires: K Hariharan, S K Tarapore

Third umpire: R M Despande

Match refree: Manu Nayyar.