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South Zone skipper Hanuma Vihari led his team to a victory over the West Zone in the domestic season-opening Duleep Trophy competition. The match went to the final day in Bengaluru as the South won the trophy by 75 runs to win the title.
The West Zone boasted of Indian internationals like Cheteshwar Pujara, Suryakumar Yadav and Prithvi Shaw but all three of them were nowhere near their usual best. Even when the likes of Priyank Panchal and Sarfaraz Khan dictated the tempo for West Zone with a 98-run stand for the 5th wicket while chasing 298 for the win, Vihari kept the pressure on the opposition.
Panchal got out for 95 at the beginning of Day 5 and from then on, it was smooth sailing for the South Zone.
Hanuma Vihari also scored a crucial 42 in the second innings after his 63 in the first innings. "Yeah! I definitely enjoyed captaincy. When you have a team like that you will enjoy doing captaincy," Hanuma Vihari said after South Zone's triumph, as quoted by PTI.
"When you have this kind of bowling attack, captaincy pressure will come down. It was our plan to curtail them to below three runs (per over), and they executed it as the quality bowlers will make the captain's job really easy," said Vihari.
Vihari was also all praises for the three Karnataka pacers, Vidwath Kaverappa, Vijayakumar Vyshak and Vasuki Koushik for their performance. The trio bagged 16 of the 20 West Zone wickets. While Kaverappa bagged a seven-wicket haul and helped South Zone bowl West Indies out for 146, Koushik picked up four wickets with left-arm spinner R Sai Kishore in the second innings as the big guns of West Zone failed to step up and deliver.
The familiarity of conditions for the three Karnataka fast bowlers at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium came in handy and South Zone made the most of it.
"All three Karnataka fast bowlers who played this match knew the wicket very well. I had said earlier as well that having bowlers who know the conditions is an advantage to us. ''But to be able to put it into use is another thing, all three of them showed their skills. The West Zone bowlers have a lot of quality on paper and to get them out needed special skills and they executed it really well," he said.
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