The players from the South Zone and West Zone will try to bridge the gap between the collective goal of a title win and their personal goals as they face each other in the Duleep Trophy final, which kicks off in Bengaluru from Wednesday. From a team perspective, West has a proud record to keep. They have appeared in 34 Duleep Trophy finals to date and have won 19 of them. They are the most successful team in this tournament and South will be happy to end that hegemony by winning a 14th title for themselves.
South could also prove a point as they had lost to the Ajinkya Rahane led West Zone by a whopping 294 runs in the final of the Duleep Trophy last year.
As it appears in any team competition, Duleep Trophy also works as a vehicle to achieve certain individual goals. Cheteshwar Pujara provides the most telling example.
The veteran India batsman was dropped from the Indian roster for the West Indies tour. The omission certainly could have left him with a bruised man.
But the Saurashtra star was not confined to a dark corner. He flew to Bengaluru and made a solid 133 for West Zone in the semi-final against Central Zone to lead his side’s entry into the title fight.
He will have his eye on another great performance in the final. That willingness to grind, shown by a man who has played 103 Tests and scored over 7000 runs, will work as a path for many others from both teams.
South vice-captain Mayank Agarwal, Sarfaraz Khan and Prithvi Shaw have come to this match based on the many runs they made in the previous Ranji season.
Mayank made two fifties (76 & 54) in the quarter-finals against North Zone, but the West pairing of Prithvi and Sarfaraz failed to kick through. The trio is looking for a better outing this week.
Hanuma Vihari and Washington Sundar also need a serious effort, but for a different reason than the aforementioned troika.
Vihari last appeared for India in the 2022 Birmingham Test against England, while Washington played Sri Lanka in the white-ball series earlier this year.
However, injuries and competition for places have limited their progress in Test Cricket. Now they want to put in an impact performance here and get back on the list of contenders.
N Tilak Varma, who has recently been called up to India’s T20I squad to face West Indies, wants to underline his red ball qualities as his stated aim is to become an all-format player .
These are all players who have been in the news for a while. But then there are players like B Sai Sudarshan, R Sai Kishore, Vysakh Vijayakumar, Vidwath Kaverappa etc who are eager to lift the veil of relative obscurity and show their wares in the longer format.
That jostling over the next five days will be an intense viewing.
South zone: Hanuma Vihari (Captain), Mayank Agarwal (Vice Captain), Sai Sudharsan, Ricky Bhui (wk), R Samarth, Washington Sundar, Sachin Baby, Pradosh Ranjan Paul, Sai Kishore, V Kaverappa, V Vyshak, KV Sasikanth, Darshan Misal , N Tilak Varma.
western zone:Priyank Panchal (Captain), Cheteshwar Pujara, Suryakumar Yadav, Harvik Desai (wk), Prithvi Shaw, Het Patel (wk), Sarfaraz Khan, Arpit Vasavada, Atit Seth, Shams Mulani, Kedar Jadhav, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, Tushar Deshpande, Chintan Gaja , Arzan Nagwaswalla.
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