South Zone defended 297 against a star-studded batting line-up of West Zone to win the 2023 Duleep Trophy. Boasting of the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara, Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav and Sarfaraz Khan, West Zone were bowled out for 146 in the the first innings and then 222 in the second.
South zone captain Hanuma Vihari reckons that the dismissal of Sarfaraz Khan turned it around for his team.
The middle-order batter was bowled on 48 by Sai Kishore after he had added 98 runs for the fifth wicket with captain Priyank Panchal to put their team in a strong position.
“Yesterday in the third session, Priyank and Sarfaraz batted really well. His dismissal was the turning point, I thought,” Vihari told reporters on Sunday.
“If Sarfaraz was there, he could have handled that spell of Vidwath and Koushik, and getting Sarfaraz’s wicket in the last session was the turning point,” he added.
Vihari is enjoying captaincy and credited the team at his disposal reduced the burden.
“Yeah! Definitely I enjoyed captaincy. When you have a team like that you will enjoy doing captaincy,” said Vihari.
“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,” he added.
He praised the Karnataka pace trio of Vidwath Kaverappa, Vijayakumar Vyshak and Vasuki Koushik as they took 16 of the 20 West Zone wickets that fell during the final.
“All three Karnataka fast bowlers who played this match knew the wicket very well. I had said earlier as well that having bowlers who know the conditions is an advantage to us,” said Vihari.
“But to be able to put it into use is another thing, all three of them showed their skills. The West Zone bowlers have a lot of quality on paper and to get them out needed special skills and they executed it really well,” he added.
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