Though the eye candy at the Madhavrao Scindia Cricket Stadium was the star-studded Rest of India team, it was the two Mumbai batsmen — Abhishek Nayar (118) and opener Sahil Kukreja (110) — who claimed the limelight on the first day of the Irani Trophy match here today.

At stumps, Mumbai were 385 for 8 with Ramesh Powar batting on 26 and Iqbal Abdulla unbeaten on 16.

For both Kukreja and southpaw Nayar it was back-to-back tons after their debut hundreds in the Mohd Nissar Trophy against Karachi Urban. They showed fine application against a bowling attack boasting of pacers like Munaf Patel, Ranadeb Bose and Ishant Sharma and spinners Pragyan Ojha and leggie Amit Mishra. In fact, the tweakers were in the line of fire during Nayar’s attacking innings and later the medium-pacers too where shown little mercy.

Munaf failed to fire again. He bowled 15.5 overs in five spells, with none producing results. Out of the 16 no balls bowled by the Rest of India bowlers, Munaf had 9. The early breakthroughs expected of him never came; instead, he gave away 31 runs from his first seven overs. Bowling in the mid 130-kph range, Munaf had pace, but he just didn’t get the line and length right.

Earlier, Mumbai elected to bat after winning the toss on a batsman-friendly wicket and were comfortably positioned with a 91-run stand between openers Ajinkya Rahane (52) and Kukreja. But soon they were tottering at 165 for 4 after Amol Muzumdar (8) and Wasim Jaffer (8) departed early. Nayar walked in and started playing his shots. He struck three boundaries in Ojha’s first over and two in Mishra’s. The Nayar-Kukreja pair added a crucial 171 to put Mumbai back on track.

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