• Madhya Pradesh created history by winning its maiden Ranji Trophy title, beating the Mumbai team comprehensively by six wickets at the final match played in Bengaluru.

• The maiden win of Madhya Pradesh in the 88-year-old tournament, considered the most prestigious domestic cricket contest, is being looked upon as extra special because Mumbai  has won the Ranji Trophy 41 times, the maximum in the tournament.

• Madhya Pradesh team is coached by Chandrakant Pandit, under whose captainship the state team had reached finals of Ranji Trophy only other time in 1998-99. However, the team lost to Karnataka then. The current team is captained by Aditya Shrivastava of Bhopal.

• On the final day, Mumbai could only manage 269 in their second innings, leaving MP with a paltry target of 108, and they did it in style as Chandrakant Pandit won a record sixth national title as a coach.

• Since 2010, the Ranji Trophy, barring Karnataka’s dominance for a few seasons and Mumbai winning it once, it has been won by teams like Rajasthan (twice), Vidarbha (twice), Saurashtra (once) and Madhya Pradesh, who would never be in contention in the past.

• When the Ranji Trophy started, the Madhya Pradesh cricket team wasn’t even formed and it was back then known as Holkar, a princely state from the British era, which produced the country’s finest cricketers  the charismatic Mushtaq Ali, or the first ever captain of the Indian cricket team — the great CK Nayudu.

• Holkar was a formidable team till the 1950s before it was rechristened as Madhya Bharat and subsequently Madhya Pradesh.

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