The Duleep Trophy quarter-finals were supposed to be about a fifteen-year-old. Almost nobody watching on the opening day will remember him.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi made 8. Ishan Kishan, his captain, made 4. East Zone were 138 for 5 at lunch against North East Zone in Bengaluru and looked like a side about to be embarrassed by the tournament’s least fancied team.
Then Sudip Kumar Gharami and Shahbaz Ahmed batted for an entire session without losing a wicket, and the whole complexion of the match changed.
The Bengal rescue
Gharami was unbeaten on 54 at lunch with the innings in genuine trouble. What followed was the sort of afternoon that gets a domestic batter noticed by people who pick India A squads.
He and Shahbaz, teammates for Bengal in the Ranji Trophy and entirely comfortable in each other’s company, added 132 without being separated through the middle session. Gharami accelerated once he reached three figures, hitting a six as the partnership passed a hundred, and looked set for a very large score indeed before Pheiroijam Jotin Singh trapped him lbw for 146.
Shahbaz went to his own hundred and finished the day unbeaten on exactly 100. East Zone closed on 355 for 6 from 80 overs, which from 138 for 5 represents a considerable act of theft.
The problem with Sooryavanshi
There is no comfortable way to write about a fifteen-year-old failing, and there is also no honest way to avoid it, because he is the reason a great many people were watching at all.
Sooryavanshi came into this quarter-final as East Zone’s vice-captain, which is a remarkable thing for a player of his age, and with a first-class average he was openly hoping to improve. He was dismissed for 8. Kishan followed cheaply. The two most recognisable names in the side contributed 12 runs between them.
That is domestic cricket doing what domestic cricket is for. Greg Chappell wrote recently that Sooryavanshi is a generational talent, and also that this is a dangerous moment in his development. Rahul Dravid has argued the game needs players like him across all formats for Test cricket to grow. Both of those things can be true while a teenager still gets out for 8 on a Sunday morning in Bengaluru.
The tournament exists precisely so that happens somewhere other than an international stage.
Mushtaq runs through West Zone
The other quarter-final produced the individual performance of the round, and it came from a left-arm spinner most casual followers could not name.
Abid Mushtaq took 5 for 39 as North Zone bowled West Zone out for 187, securing a first-innings lead of 64. He started by dismissing Prithvi Shaw, who had made a typically busy 22 from 21 balls, with a delivery that turned enough to beat the defence and hit off stump. Shaw’s dismissal was the turning point of the innings.
Mushtaq then came back to work through the middle order. Shivalik Sharma went for 22. Ruturaj Gaikwad, captaining the side, was trapped lbw for 5. Urvil Patel made a duck. Tushar Deshpande completed the five-for.
Shams Mulani offered resistance with 52 and Musheer Khan occupied the crease for a long period, but West Zone never built the partnership they needed. Arshdeep Singh had earlier removed Harvik Desai for 3.
North Zone’s late hitting
North Zone’s own first innings had been rescued in similar fashion, though rather more violently.
They had slipped to 220 for 9 before Anshul Kamboj made 60 from 52 balls with five fours and five sixes, dragging the total to 251. Ayush Badoni had earlier made 51. Without Kamboj’s hitting the lead would not have existed.
By the close of the second day North Zone had reached 87 for 3 in their second innings, an overall lead of 133, with Badoni unbeaten on 20 and Abdul Samad on 4.
What comes next
Both quarter-finals run to 26 August. The winners go into semi-finals starting 30 August, with East Zone or North East Zone facing defending champions Central Zone, and North Zone or West Zone meeting South Zone. Every match to that point is at the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, played without spectators because campus rules do not permit them.
The final has been moved. It will be played at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai from 6 September, a decision taken specifically so that people can watch it, and it will be broadcast on Star Sports with streaming on JioHotstar.
For the players, the point of all this is what happens afterwards. The Duleep Trophy in its restored zonal format has become the clearest audition available for India A selection and, further down the line, for the Test side. Devdutt Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel are currently scoring centuries in Colombo. Both were domestic run-scorers first.
Gharami and Mushtaq had good days. Somebody in Mumbai will have noticed.