Vaibhav Suryavanshi batted amazingly in the semi-finals of Duleep Trophy. This 15 year old young batsman, playing for East Zone, scored 92 runs in 81 balls in the first innings against Central Zone. During his explosive innings, he hit 7 fours and the same number of sixes. He was out as the first wicket on the score of 161. After this, East Zone lost the remaining 9 wickets in scoring 105 runs. That means the entire team was limited to 266 runs only.
Central Zone also scored 266 runs in its first innings. In this way no one from both the teams got any lead. The start that the opening pair of Vaibhav and Abhinyu Easwaran gave to East Zone, it seemed that they would take a huge lead but Harsh Dubey (4 wickets), Aryan Pandey (3 wickets) and Yash Thakur (3 wickets) dashed their hopes.
Also read: 14 fours and sixes… Vaibhav Suryavanshi's chaos, Sachin Tendulkar's record narrowly missed
East Zone's innings disintegrated as soon as Vaibhav was out.
The East Zone team started its innings today (31 August). Vaibhav and Easwaran took the score beyond 150 in just 24 overs. When Vaibhav was close to his century, he lost his wicket while trying to hit a six off Harsh Dubey. Harsh Dubey had Kumar Kushagra caught at slip on the very next ball. East Zone team was in a strong position despite losing 2 wickets in 2 balls but the story changed as soon as Easwaran was out.
Also read: Vaibhav Suryavanshi missed a century but broke 57 years old record in Duleep Trophy
Easwaran was out after scoring 69 runs and the total score was 200. His wicket was taken by Aryan Pandey. Aryan then took the wickets of Virat Singh (5) and Sudeep Gharami (25) and increased East Zone's score to 213/5. Captain Ishan Kishan (16) and Anukul Roy (16) took over the East Zone from here and took it beyond 240. East Zone team was still in a position to take the lead but Yash Thakur took the wickets of first Ishaan Kishan and then Harsh Dubey to take the score to 246/7. Yash and Harsh then dealt with the lower order of East Zone quickly and did not allow them to take the lead.