South Zone and East Zone gear up for high-octane Duleep Trophy final

The Duleep Trophy final is set to be a battle royale between South Zone and East Zone in the cauldron of Chennai, beginning on September 6. At RevSportz, we list out the salient features to look out for in the highly-anticipated game.

KL Rahul, Devdutt Padikkal and Mohammed Siraj added to the South Zone squad

The formidable trio of Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul and Devdutt Padikkal have been picked for the final. Suddenly, the South Zone unit looks relatively stronger on paper. Although a caveat has to be added that Siraj didn’t look anywhere near his best in Sri Lanka, mostly bowling medium pace. Meanwhile, Padikkal was in fantastic form in the Sri Lanka Tests, scoring two hundreds.

What about South Zone’s formidable batting unit?

Just a glimpse at South Zone’s batting unit, and it seems like they have a galaxy of stars. Narayan Jagadeeshan, Devdutt Padikkal, KL Rahul, Karun Nair and Tilak Varma, the captain — all of the aforesaid players have been part of the India set-up. The South Zone coaching staff also have to somehow fit into the side two promising batters — Shaik Rasheed and R Smaran. To make it even more intriguing, there is no way they can drop their marquee all-rounder, Shreyas Gopal. In that context, Karun once more might miss out on selection. The experienced campaigner was surprisingly not picked for the semi-final versus North Zone.

Will Tilak Varma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Ishan Kishan take part in the final?

The indications are that the trio might play in the summit clash. The final call still rests with Gautam Gambhir, the India head coach. The subplot to their availability is that the troika have been picked for the Afghanistan T20Is, starting on September 13 , And they are expected to report for training in New Delhi on September 9 or 10. On the other hand, the final between South Zone and East Zone will be played from September 6 to 10.

What about East Zone’s line-up?

All eyes will be on the 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. The left-hand batter didn’t just play an array of shots in the last-four game versus Central Zone, but he was even prepared to showcase his forward defence while facing Yash Thakur and Saransh Jain. If Vaibhav ends up playing in the final, the opposition would be poring through his batting videos in order to find a chink or two in his armour. East Zone also have a fine pace attack, comprising the experienced pair of Mukesh Kumar and Mohammed Shami. Both of them bowled well in the second innings in the semifinal, bagging seven wickets between them.

On a side note, South Zone would be concerned over Vidwath Kaverappa’s injury. The tall pacer was seen walking around the CoE ground with a tape on Day 4 of the semifinal.

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