In the quarter-final match of Duleep Trophy 2026, North Zone has defeated star-studded West Zone by 52 runs. Abid Mushtaq also bowled lethally in the second innings and took 4 wickets, reducing West Zone to 234. With this victory, North Zone has made it to the semi-finals. He had set a target of 287 runs, chasing which the West Zone team under the captaincy of Ruturaj Gaikwad had scored 220 runs at the loss of 7 wickets till stumps on the third day.
West Zone needed 67 runs to win and had only 3 wickets left. His hopes were pinned on Urvil Patel, who was unbeaten on 17 runs. At the beginning of the last day of the match (26 August), Abid Mushtaq dashed the hopes of West Zone by taking 2 wickets. After this, Nishant Sindhu wrapped up West Zone's innings by dismissing Urvil Patel (25) LBW. The North team will now face the South Zone in the semi-finals.
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Abid Mushtaq took 9 wickets
After winning the toss and opting to bat first at Ground-1 of BCCI's Center of Excellence in Bengaluru, the North Zone team was all out for 251 runs. Tanush Kotian and Tushar Deshpande took 4-4 wickets. West Zone had batsmen like Prithvi Shaw, Musheer Khan, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Urvil Patel, so it seemed that they would score huge in their first innings and get a big lead but Abid Mushtaq took 5 wickets and reduced them to 187. Arshdeep Singh gave good support to Abid and took 3 wickets. Anshul Kamboj took 2 wickets.
North Zone got a significant lead of 64 runs. With the help of excellent innings from Ayush Badoni (50) and Nishant Sindhu, he scored 222 runs in the second innings and gave the target of 287 runs to West Zone. Chasing this, West Zone had at one time scored 195 runs at the loss of 3 wickets and seemed to be moving strongly towards victory but the story changed as soon as captain Gaikwad (66) was run out. West Zone lost 3 more wickets in the next 25 runs, due to which their score soon became 220/7. Musheer Khan (96) was also out.
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West Zone's last hope was now Urvil Patel but Abid Mushtaq ensured North Zone's victory by taking consecutive wickets from the other end. This left arm spinner from Jammu and Kashmir took a total of 9 wickets in the match. He was awarded the Player of the Match award.