Rajat Patidar made another shiny addition to his trophy cabinet as the IPL 2025 winning-captain led Central Zone to Duleep Trophy triumph over South Zone in Bengaluru on Monday (September 15). Central Zone, who did well to bat South Zone out of the game in the first innings, went into Day 5 needing just 65 runs to win. They got there in the 21st over, even as they lost four wickets in the process.
Ankit Sharma and Andre Siddarth's 192-run stand on Day 4 saved South Zone from going down by an innings, but their defiance couldn't put their team fully out of the misery of an impending defeat. Central Zone's Left-arm spinner Kumar Kartikeya, who got the ball to turn sharply in both innings, finished with eight wickets in the game (4 in each innings). Once Kartikeya broke the vital partnership between the two batters, South Zone's innings plummetted quickly. They went from 414/6 to 426 all-out, to set Central Zone a paltry target.
Ankit and Gurjapneet Singh offered South Zone a modicum of hope in the first hour as they reduced Central Zone to 24/3 in chase but the target was too little to eke out a full-fledged collapse. Ankit picked a second wicket when he dismissed Patidar, but that was merely consolatory. In a fitting finish, Yash Rathod – Central Zone's run accummalator from the first innings, wrapped up the victory with a boundary off medium-pacer Vasuki Koushik.
@B0$South Zone 149 & 426 (Ankit Sharma 99, Andre Siddarth C 84*, Smaran Ravichandran 67; Kumar Kartikeya 4-110, Saransh Jain 3-130) lost to Central Zone 511 & 66/4 (Akshay Wadkar 19*, Yash Rathod 13*; Gurjapneet Singh 2-21) by 6 wickets
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