Central Zone won a thriller of a final after they bowled South Zone out for a score of 291, winning the final match of the 2014-15 edition of the Duleep Trophy by 9 runs. Shreyas Gopal was the last man to be dismissed, bowled by Ali Murtaza, who emerged the pick of the bowlers with figures of three for 59.
Resuming from a score of 280 for seven after lunch, Gopal and Pragyan Ojha were required to hold on to their nerves in order in a crucial period, where they needed 21 runs to win with three wickets in hand. What occured post-lunch however, was a display of poor shot selection by the batsmen, and superb crisis management by the Central bowlers. Piyush Chawla removed Ojha in the 86th over by trapping him leg-before, with the ball seeming to crash into the middle and leg stumps. Eight down.
Murtaza, who had picked four wickets in South Zone’s first innings, went for the kill in the 89th over, removing Mithun in the last ball of the over. It was a ridiculous attempt by the number ten batsman, as the ball was pitched on the middle and leg stump and was didn’t turn substantially, which Mithun tried to sweep for a six over square leg. He ended up missing the ball completely as it crashed into the stumps. Nine down. Central on the verge of a memorable win.
The South Zone camp had by now pinned all their hopes on Gopal, who is known to have played a decent knock or two in the past. Gopal took a single in the 88th over, with Sharath defending Chawla in the rest of the over. Situation still tense.
With 10 runs needed to win, and two more sessions to go, one would expect the lower-order batsmen to defend against the rampaging opposition, testing the latter’s patience and waiting for the them to make a mistake. That was not the case with Gopal however, who decided to run down the track after failing to score a run in the first five balls of the 89th over. That however, proved fatal as the the tossed up delivery ended up hitting the middle stump, sending the Central Zone players into a frenzy, with a pall of gloom descending on the South Zone players.
South Zone began the day, resuming from their overnight score of 184 for one after 44 overs, needing 117 runs to win with an entire day and nine wickets in hand. KL Rahul, who scored his second century of the final, becoming the tenth batsman to achieve the feat in Duleep trophy history, started off run-flow with boundaries in the second over. Aparajith, who had been going steadily in the previous day, did not let too many dot balls spoil their run-rate either. The 100-run partnership between the two was brought up when South Zone moved to a score of 196 for one in the 46th over.
Pankaj Singh however, decided to play party-spoiler to the partnership in the 51st over, when he removed both Rahul and in-form wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik in a space of four deliveries to bring South’s march to a halt. The onus was suddenly on Aparajith to guide his side to a win. Ramaswamy Prasanna was the batsman to walk into the crease after the sudden dismissals, and he took his time to settle at the crease. Prasanna joined the run-scoring act in the 66th over, when he smashed Ali Murtaza for two sixes and a four off the last three deliveries, rushing into the 20s in no time.
At 252 for four, with 49 runs needed to win with six wickets in hand, Central Zone were running out of hopes of a victory with the Aparajith and Prasanna pair at the crease milking runs with ease. Off-spinner Jalaj Saxena decided to influence the course of the match by removing Prasanna, trapping him leg-before off a full-length delivery. Aparajith was dismissed off the first ball of the next over when he decided to step out of the crease and play a good-length Chawla delivery towards mid-wicket, but the ball spun in the other direction and keeper Naman Ojha collected it safely and removed the bails in an instant.
Saxena inflicted another blow at the end of the 76th over, when he removed the dangerous Hanuman Vihari by bowling a well-pitched delivery, which the batsman attempted to play against the spin, but ended up patting the ball back to the bowler, who moved to his left during his follow-through and collected the catch. Skipper Vinay Kumar walked in to bat with the purpose of playing a captain’s knock in mind. He managed to hit three boundaries and reach a score of 24 from 38 balls, helping South Zone reach at a striking distance of victory. He was however dismissed at the stroke of lunch, when Murtaza delivery went through the bat and pad to crash into the leg-stump.
Brief scores:
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Central Zone 276 (Robin Bist 79; Baba Aparajith 2 for 26) & 403 (Faiz Fazal 72, Jalaj Saxena 71, Robin Bist 112*; Shreyas Gopal 4 for 60, Pragyan Ojha 3 for 99) lead South Zone 379 (KL Rahul 185; Ali Murtaza 4 for 59) & 291 (Kl Rahul 130, Baba Aparajith 56; Ali Murtaza 3 for 59, Piyush Chawla 3 for 83) by 9 runs.
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