Duleep Trophy 2023 Final: Pace sensation Vidwath Kaverappa ignites fire to engineer West Zone’s collapse

After getting bowled out for 213 in the first innings of the ongoing Duleep Trophy final, South Zone needed something special with the ball and that’s exactly what young pacer Vidwath Kaverappa delivered.

The 24-year-old picked up seven wickets in West Zone's 1st innings and gave his team a massive lead in the ongoing Duleep Trophy final. He picked up some of the key wickets in the form of Cheteshwar Pujara, Suryakumar Yadav and Sarfaraz Khan and with that, South Zone took an important lead of 67 runs.

Notably, hailing from Karnataka, Kaverappa has picked up 46 first-class wickets in 12 matches. He was picked up by Punjab Kings ahead of IPL 2023 but the pacer didn’t get an opportunity to represent the franchise in any of the matches. He represented Gulbarga Mystics in the domestic T20 league of Karnataka last year and helped his team to win the tournament in the very first edition of the competition.

Since then, he was under the radar and in the final of the Duleep Trophy, the cricketer has shown his class and absolutely ratted West Zone’s batting unit. Recently, he also travelled to Namibia with his state team and picked up six wickets in four ODIs that Karnataka played against Namibia's national team. He is considered the next big thing in Karnataka cricket and his performance has lived up to the hype around him.

Hanuma Vihari excels as South Zone in control of summit clash

South Zone skipper Hanuma Vihari did remarkably well in the first innings and once again stepped up in the second innings. Notably, South Zone lost two quick wickets in their second innings but Mayank Agarwal and Vihari managed to pull the team out of danger. Both Mayank and Vihari are back in the hutch now having scored 35 and 42 respectively in the second innings.

Arzan Nagwaswalla was brilliant in the opening spell for West Zone but his side seems to have lost the momentum. They now need some really strong performance with the ball in order to make a comeback in the match.