East Zone reach the Duleep Trophy final as Shami takes five and hits the winning runs

Mukesh Kumar took the match award and Mohammed Shami hit the winning runs as East Zone chased 159 to reach the final
East Zone are through to the Duleep Trophy final. They beat Central Zone by four wickets at the BCCI Centre of Excellence Ground 1 in Bengaluru, chasing 159 in 39.3 overs after a semi-final in which neither side ever pulled clear.
Central Zone made 266 in their first innings and East Zone answered with exactly the same total, leaving the match level after two innings and turning it into a two-day shootout. Central Zone were then bowled out for 158 in 50.2 overs, and East Zone got home with four wickets in hand.
Mohammed Shami finished with five wickets across the match and struck the runs that settled it. Mukesh Kumar was named player of the match.

The first innings that would not separate them
Central Zone batted first after losing the toss and were held to 266 in 80.1 overs, with Rinku Singh top-scoring on 60 from 88 balls. Abhijit Sarkar was the pick of the East Zone bowlers with three for 38, and Mukesh and Shami shared the rest of the work.
East Zone replied in far fewer overs — 266 in 57 — which said more about how they scored than how comfortable it was. Harsh Dubey took four for 66 for Central Zone, and the innings ended on the same figure the opposition had posted.

Sooryavanshi's 92 from 81 balls
The innings that made the difference in that first exchange came from Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is 15 and made 92 from 81 balls with seven fours and seven sixes. It made him the youngest player to score a half-century in the tournament's history.
He was not finished. In the fourth innings he made 40 from 43 balls, giving the chase the start it needed on a surface that had already produced two innings of 266 and one of 158.

Mukesh and Shami break the third innings
Central Zone's second innings was where the match was decided. They were dismissed for 158 in 50.2 overs, with Mukesh Kumar taking four for 44 and Shami three for 56. Aman Mokhade held out longest for 41 from 89 balls, and Arshad Khan and Harsh Dubey added 25 and 24 further down.
Shami's five wickets in the match came at a useful moment. He has not played for India since a Test against New Zealand in March 2025, and he is bowling in a season in which the selectors have been picking squads for a busy September.

A chase that was never quite safe
Needing 159, East Zone lost six wickets getting there. Ishan Kishan finished 39 not out, and Harsh Dubey took four for 53 to give Central Zone a late look at the game before Shami came out and hit the winning runs.
Kishan and Sooryavanshi were both named in India's Twenty20 international squad for the Afghanistan series this week, so both go into that camp having batted in the fourth innings of a first-class semi-final decided by a margin this narrow.

Chennai next
East Zone now meet South Zone in the final, which the BCCI has moved from the Centre of Excellence to the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai so that spectators can attend. It runs from September 6 to 10.
Central Zone, who came into the semi-finals on a bye given to last season's two finalists, go out having twice been within reach of the total that would have taken them through.
They lost by four wickets after matching East Zone run for run over the first two innings, and it was the third innings of the match that separated the sides.

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