Duleep Trophy semi-finals are currently in progress with West Zone facing Central Zone while North Zone have locked horns with South Zone. Both matches are being played in Bengaluru - one at the Chinnaswamy Stadium and the other at Alur Cricket Stadium. Interestingly, both matches suffered similar fate with the first innings turning out to be low-scoring. India Test discards Prithvi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan, Cheteshwar Pujara and Suryakumar Yadav - all playing for West Zone - returned with low scores in the first innings.
However, Pujara and Surya have made amends in their second essay scoring impressive half-centuries. While Surya was aggressive scoring 52 runs off just 58 deliveries, Pujara was defensive as usual scoring an unbeaten 50 off 103 balls. Having earned a big lead of 92 runs in the first innings, West Zone ended the second day at 149/3 after 39 overs and are in a good position at the moment.
Pujara has been dropped for the upcoming West Indies Test series and has returned to domestic cricket now to make a comeback in the national side. On the other hand, Suryakumar Yadav lost his place after being in the standbys for the WTC Final and a decent show bodes well for him as well.
Prithvi Shaw endures another failure
Meanwhile, one more cricketer who is hoping to make a comeback - Prithvi Shaw - endured a complete failure in the Duleep Trophy semi-final. He got starts in both innings scoring 26 and 25 runs respectively but he couldn't convert the start into a big score. Shaw has gone down the pecking order completely when it comes to making it to team India and consistently needs big scores to even stake a claim.
In another semi-final, North Zone and South Zone are fighting an interesting battle with both teams almost nullifying each other's first innings score. While North Zone were skittled for 198 runs in their first essay, South Zone could make only 195 runs in response. In their second innings, North Zone have managed to reach 51/2 in 11 overs. With players like Mayank Agarwal, Tilak Varma and Hanuma Vihari in the opposition ranks, the North Zone side will have to bat well and set up a stiff target.
