look news india
This time in the final match of Duleep Trophy, one of the most prestigious tournaments of Indian domestic cricket, the team of East Zone gave such an explosive and unbeatable performance which has once again created a sensation in the corridors of Indian cricket. In this exciting and decisive title match played at the historic MA Chidambaram Stadium (Chepauk), Chennai, East Zone completely dominated the strong team of South Zone and finally ended its 13-year long drought. The East Zone team, which last graced the Duleep Trophy in the 2012-13 domestic season, this time took the field under the leadership of captain Ishan Kishan and mesmerized everyone with its brilliant play and fighting spirit. With this historic win, the East Zone team once again proved at what level their talent and ability is in domestic cricket, which will not be at all easy for the national selectors to ignore in the times to come.
The biggest and brightest story of this title match was written by the bat of the Indian team’s explosive wicketkeeper-batsman and East Zone captain Ishan Kishan. Ishan Kishan created a stir on the field during his brilliant and responsible captaincy innings, scoring a total of almost 350 runs in the final match. On the difficult pitch of Chennai, he displayed amazing batting in the first innings and played a historic inning of 270 runs, which destroyed the South Zone bowlers. Thanks to his double century, East Zone scored a huge score of 708 runs in its first innings, which was completely enough to turn the tide of the match. Apart from this, other young batsmen also supported him fully in this big innings, in which Kumar Kushagra demonstrated his excellent technique and played a brilliant century of 101 runs, while opener Shikhar Mohan also showed great wisdom and made a valuable contribution of 85 runs.
Under the pressure of the huge score of 708 runs scored by East Zone in the first innings, the entire batting order of South Zone disintegrated badly and their entire team was limited to only 336 runs in the first innings. Thus, on the basis of the first innings, East Zone got a huge and unbeatable lead of 372 runs, which almost decided the outcome of the match. The bowlers of East Zone used all their strength to stop the batsmen of South Zone. The team’s experienced and sharp fast bowler Mukesh Kumar displayed his swing and accuracy and took 3 important wickets, while India’s star fast bowler Mohammed Shami, all-rounder Kaunine Qureshi and Shikhar broke the back of the opposition team by taking two wickets each with their economical bowling. The heavy workload on the South Zone bowlers was clearly visible throughout the match, as they had to bowl 163 long overs in the first innings, due to which they looked quite physically tired.
When the game progressed on the fifth and final day of the match, East Zone, despite having a huge lead in their first innings, continued their batting instead of declaring the innings immediately and decided to completely eliminate the opposition from the match. During this time, all-rounder Kaunine Qureshi scored the most memorable and historic century of his career in the history of first class cricket. Qureshi batted brilliantly, facing 189 balls and playing an unbeaten inning of 116 runs, which included 13 brilliant fours and 4 skyscraper sixes. His century proved to be a trouble-shooter for the team. Along with this, his partnership with Anukul Roy, who played a brilliant inning of 64 runs, took East Zone’s total lead beyond the 700-run mark. During this long batting, captain Ishan Kishan also opened his hands and played a quick inning of 80 runs in the second innings and once again proved his excellent form and technical ability in red-ball cricket.
During the match, the South Zone team tried to adopt every possible strategic maneuver from their side, which also included the return of star fast bowler Mohammed Siraj in their camp, but despite this, none of their plans worked on the field and they completely failed to stop the East Zone batsmen. Tripurna Vijay bowled brilliantly in both the innings in this match, taking five wickets each and cementing her place among the most successful bowlers of the match, but could not save the team from defeat. Ultimately on the fifth day when East Zone declared their huge innings, South Zone had no chance to make up for the huge first innings deficit as the match time ended. Sensing the situation, the captains of both the teams joined hands and declared the match a draw, after which, under the rules, East Zone was declared the winner on the basis of first innings lead. As soon as the winner was decided, captain Ishan Kishan and his teammates jumped with joy on the field and started celebrating the victory by dancing with the stumps in their hands.