Star-studded West Zone will take on a buoyant Central Zone, which comes into the contest after having beaten East Zone in the quarterfinal, in the Duleep Trophy semifinal at the Alur (I) Cricket Ground in Bengaluru on Wednesday.
Defending champion West, captained by Priyank Panchal, boasts a hefty batting line-up with Cheteshwar Pujara, Suryakumar Yadav, Prithvi Shaw and Sarfaraz Khan building an envious spine.
West’s bowling looks light compared to its batting, particularly in the absence of the Saurashtra left-arm pace duo of Jaydev Unadkat – who was picked for India’s tour of West Indies – and Chetan Sakariya, who pulled out earlier this week due to an injury.
But it still has the likes of Shams Mulani, Chintan Gaja, Arzan Nagwaswalla and Tushar Deshpande (who was roped in as Sakariya’s replacement) to call upon against a Central batting line-up, which didn’t look assured against East.
Led by first-time captain Shivam Mavi, Central’s bowling shone against East, with pacer Avesh Khan and left-arm spinner Saurabh Kumar doing the star turn. The latter was particularly potent in the second innings, where he took a career-best figures of 8/64.
“Batting wasn’t easy in the East Zone game [which happened at the same ground]. Both the outfield and the wicket were slow. The pitch was also a bit unpredictable, particularly in the second innings,” said Mavi.
A lot of eyes will be trained on Pujara, who will be playing his first competitive game after the World Test Championship Final defeat to Australia, following which he was left out of the Test team for the West Indies series.
A win against Central will take Panchal’s men to a record-extending 34th final and possibly to a record-breaking 19th title, going past North Zone.
With rain clouds hovering ominously over Alur, the match could go down as a shoot-out for the first-innings lead.
