The ongoing Deodhar Trophy has proved to be a smash hit. The likes of Baba Aparajith, Manoj Tiwary, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Suryakumar Yadav and Axar Patel — all gifted cricketers, have lit up the inter-zonal limited over competition.
Three of the five zonal teams — North, South and Central — have been eliminated and the defending champion West Zone will compete with East Zone for the title in a day-night match at the Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday.
The final will mark the end of BCCI’s domestic 50-over competition.
The Vijay Hazare Trophy that Karnataka won and Deodhar Trophy were advanced to enable the national selectors watch some one-day specialists in action and select India’s 30 probables for next year’s the ICC World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Not long ago a public perception was created that the Duleep and Deodhar trophies served no purpose and that both tournaments needed to be scrapped.
But the likes of Aparajith, Tiwary, Maan, Yadav and Patel, to name just a handful, would declare that they would welcome every opportunity, including the Deodhar Trophy, to show their talent.
Tough job The zonal selectors have a tough job to pick the right team from a large pool, giving much importance to the all-round skills of the players, apart from choosing specialist batsmen and bowlers.
The West Zone selectors may pat themselves on their back for choosing personnel who could excel in two departments of the game. For example Shardul Thakur, who likes to run in and bowl fast, showed his ability with the bat and helped Axar Patel surmount a stiff score of 314 set by South Zone.
Aparajith (113 out of 296) stole the thunder with a second tournament century on a seaming track that saw his side beat Central Zone.
The experienced Tiwary (151 out of 273) batted virtually singlehandedly to turn the match on its head against a strong North Zone team.
Mann scored a high-quality half-century (83 out of 221) and caught the attention.
And much against the run of play, Mumbai batsman Yadav (80 out of 319), demolished the South attack and paved the way for a West win with a rousing stand with Patel.
The Wankhede curator Ramesh Mamunkar prepared a pitch that offered much help to the seamers in the first two matches, but on Monday the bowlers suffered on a perfect batting beauty.
The final will be played on the same pitch and hopefully the batsmen will call the shots.
The teams (from):
West Zone : Yusuf Pathan (captain), Ambati Rayudu , Ankit Bawne, Arpit Vasavada, Domnic Joseph, Deepak Hooda, Shreyas Iyer, Sheldon Jackson, Kedar Jadhav, Rush Kalaria, Dhawal Kulkarni, Axar Patel, Smit Patel, Shardul Thakur and Suryakumar Yadav.
East Zone : Manoj Tiwary (captain), Shreevats Goswami, Parvez Aziz, Virat Singh, Saurabh Tiwary, Biplab Samantaray, Kumar Deobrat, Saurasish Lahiri, Shahbaz Nadeem, Veerpratap Singh, Ashoke Dinda, Ishank Jaggi, Deepak Behera, Arabind Singh and Pritam Das.
