South Zone beat West Zone by 75 runs to lift Duleep Trophy

Bengaluru: South Zone applied finishing touches to their superiority across the last four days, defeating West Zone by 75 runs to clinch the Duleep Trophy here on Sunday.

Chasing 298 to win, West Zone, overnight 182/5, were bowled out for 222. Left-arm spinner Sai Kishore and pacer Vasuki Koushik were the pick of the bowlers for South Zone, sharing seven wickets among them.

This was South's 14th title win in the Duleep Trophy, and they will also count this as a sweet revenge. In the 2022 final, West had beaten South by 294 runs. Priyank Panchal, who started the day on 92, was the biggest stumbling block in South's march to the title, and he could add only three runs this morning.

The performance will definitely boost Vihari's credentials in his attempt to reclaim his lost spot in the Indian team. But for now, it is quite understandable that the right-hander termed the whole experience as an “enjoyable” one.

“Yeah! Definitely I enjoyed captaincy. When you have a team like that you will enjoy doing captaincy,” said Vihari, who will turn out for Madhya Pradesh for the rest of the domestic season. However, Vihari paid wholesome compliments to the bowling attack of South Zone.

“When you have this kind of bowling attack, captaincy pressure will come down. It was our plan to curtail them to below three runs (per over), and they executed it as the quality bowlers will make the captain's job really easy,” said Vihari. Vihari also reserved a special word of praise for three Karnataka pacers, Vidwath Kaverappa, Vijayakumar Vyshak and Vasuki Koushik.

Panchal edged pacer Vidwath Kaverappa, who was later adjudged man of the match, to Ricky Bhui behind the stumps as West slipped to 189 for 6. Vidwath took the ball away from Panchal and the latter dangled his bat outside with fatal results.