Excited to captain a young Mumbai team, says Tare

The team has collected only six points from three matches, occupying a bottom-10 slot in the Elite A and B standings. To compound its misery, a number of its high-profile players are either injured or donning the national colours (with India or India A), leaving the domestic heavyweight with no option but to field Gen-Next.

But, skipper Aditya Tare, one of the very few senior members in the touring party, couldn’t hide his thrill ahead of the Tamil Nadu duel here. “There are a lot of changes, new players are coming in. Good guys from the Under-19 and Under-23 level have been picked in the squad. I am pretty excited as a captain to be leading such a young side,” said Tare.

“At the moment, it is just a test of our character. This game is going to show what the future of Mumbai cricket is. You will see a glimpse of the talent in this match,” he told mediapersons. The 32-year-old Tare remarked the only way forward for a new-look Mumbai is to play positive and aggressive cricket.

“We have our back against the wall. There is a different energy in the team and we are prepared for the Tamil Nadu match. Both of us are on par I think.”

Vijay Shankar taking itone step at a time

Facing a daunting task in the second half of the league phase, Tamil Nadu captain Vijay Shankar isn’t looking too far ahead. “It’s about how we play. I feel four days is a long period of time. We just have to do well in a day or a session first. If we are well-placed in the first session, things will be good for us,” said Vijay Shankar, post the training sessionon Friday.

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Vijay Shankar (captain), Abhinav Mukund, Ganga Sridhar Raju, Suryap Prakash, Kaushik Gandhi, Baba Aparajith, Dinesh Karthik, Ravichandran Ashwin, R Sai Kishore, Manimaran Siddharth, T Natarajan, Narayan Jagadeesan, K Vignesh, K Mukunth, Pradosh Ranjan Paul and Baba Indrajith.

Mumbai: Aditya Tare (captain), Jay Bista, Hardik Tamore, Bhupen Lalwani, Sarfaraz Khan, Subham Ranjane, Akash Parkar, Siddesh Lad, Deepak Shetty, Shams Mulani, Royston Dais, Vinayak Bhoir, Shashank Attarde, Thushar Deshpande and Aquib Kureshi.