Cheteshwar Pujara, who was out of India’s Test team, could not do much in the Duleep Trophy semi-finals. Playing from West Zone, Pujara could score only 28 runs in 103 balls. He was caught out by Central Zone captain Shivam Mavi at the hands of Amandeep Khare.
2 more top batters from West Zone failed on the first day of semi-finals. Suryakumar Yadav was out on 7 and Sarfaraz Khan on zero runs. Everyone was dismissed by Shivam Mavi.
Pujara out after WTC final
Pujara, who has scored 7,195 runs in 103 Tests for India, played his last match for Team India last month. He came out to play for India in the World Test Championship against Australia and could only score 14 and 27 runs in 2 innings. After a poor performance in the WTC final, he was dropped from the Test team for the tour of the West Indies.
SF-1: Prithvi Shaw could also score only 26 runs
The first semi-final of the Duleep Trophy began on Wednesday at Alur in Karnataka. West Zone captain Priyank Panchal won the toss and elected to bat, but the team was bundled out for 43 runs. Prithvi Shaw returned to the pavilion after scoring 26 and Panchal 13 runs. Pujara, who came after him, could only score 28 runs.
Atit Seth scored 74 runs
Atit Seth, who came out to bat at number-7 from the West Zone, scored 74 runs. He shared a 73-run partnership with Dharmendrasinh Jadeja. Jadeja got out after scoring 39 runs. The team lost the last wicket on the score of 203 runs. In the end, Chintan Gaja remained not out after scoring 13 runs and Arjan Nagwaswala 5 runs.
By the end of the first day’s play, West Zone has scored 216 runs for 8 wickets. Shivam Mavi took 4 wickets from the central zone. Apart from them, Avesh Khan, Yash Thakur, Saurabh Kumar and Saransh Jain got one wicket each.
SF-2: North Zone all out on Day 1
The second semi-final between South and North Zone is also underway at the M Chinnaswamy ground in Bengaluru. After losing the toss and electing to bat first, the North Zone team got all out for 198 runs. No batter from the team could score fifty. Prabhsimran Singh scored the highest 49 runs.
Apart from Prabhsimran, Ankit Kumar 33, Harshit Rana 31, Nishant Sindhu 27, Vaibhav Arora 23 and Dhruv Shore could score only 11 runs. None of the other batters could score more than 5 runs.
5 wickets for Kavrappa
South Zone fast bowler Vidwat Kavarappa took 5 wickets for 28 runs. KV Sasikanth got 2 wickets, while Vijaykumar Vaishakh, R Sai Kishore and Washington Sundar got 1-1 wickets.
South Zone lost 4 wickets
Rain played spoilsport in Bengaluru on the first day, but South Zone started their first innings on Wednesday itself. The team batted 17 overs and lost 4 wickets for 63 runs. Opener Mayank Agarwal remained not out after scoring 37 runs along with Tilak Verma (12 runs).
Team’s Sai Sudarshan 9, Ravikumar Samarth got out after scoring 1 run. At the same time, Captain Hanuma Vihari and Ricky Bhui could not even open their account. Both were dismissed by Harshit Rana. Apart from him, Baltej Singh also took 2 wickets. South Zone are still 135 runs behind in the first innings with only 6 wickets remaining.