Vinayak Samant (113) scored his maiden first class century, while team partner Rohit Sharma (108) struck his second of the match as Mumbai batted Uttar Pradesh out of the final and virtually assured itself of its 38th Ranji Trophy title.  

Aware that their 157-run first innings lead was enough to win the title in case of a drawn match, Mumbai adopted a safety-first approach and batted on and on till they were all out for 367. With just one day left, UP would require a miracle to chase down the huge target of 525-runs.

However, Sachin Tendulkar could not perform again to his expectations in both the innings. The star batsman, who scored a duck in the first innings and was battling a viral fever, batted at number seven in the second essay only to score four runs and fall to spinner Piyush Chawla.

Apart from Samant and Rohit, skipper Wasim Jaffer scored a useful 85 runs for the team. Rohit became only the sixth batsman to score two centuries in a Ranji Trophy final. For UP, Piyush Chawla and Parvinder Singh scalped three wickets each. Resuming at the overnight score of 130 for no loss, Mumbai soon realised that the UP bowlers were not in a mood to throw in the towel.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar picked Jaffer in the 43rd over just before the opening stand was about to reach the 150-mark and suddenly wicket started tumbling as Mumbai, from 146 for no loss, slumped to 241 for six. Samant survived numerous edges and near-misses but gamely hung on for his maiden century before falling to Parvinder Singh after a 239-ball 113 that included 17 hits to the fence.

Rohit's 146-ball knock was studded with 17 crisp boundaries and a massive six off Praveen Gupta which also brought up his century.

Parvinder was on a hat-trick as he removed Zaheer Khan for a first ball duck but Dhawal Kulkarni (15) denied him the feat.

Chawla finally dropped curtains on Mumbai's second innings by removing Kulkarni.

Scores in brief:

Mumbai (first innings): 402
Uttar Pradesh (first innings): 245
Mumbai (second innings): 367 all out, Samant 113, Rohit 108, Jaffer 85, Chawla 4/94, Parvinder 3/46.