Tezzbuzz Desk – In the final match of Duleep Trophy, South Zone captain Tilak Verma missed scoring a century by just one run. Tilak Verma was out after scoring 99 runs and with his wicket the first innings of South Zone also ended. The South Zone team could score only 336 runs in the first innings. With this, East Zone achieved a huge lead of 372 runs on the basis of first innings. East Zone had scored a huge score of 708 runs in its first innings.

Tilak Verma batted brilliantly in his innings, faced 211 balls and scored 99 runs with the help of 9 fours. He was dismissed by East Zone spin bowler Mohammad Kunin Qureshi. The special thing was that Qureshi caught Tilak on his own ball. In this way, Tilak Verma remained just one run away from the 9th century of his first class career. He was the most successful batsman of South Zone's first innings with an innings of 99 runs. Tilak Verma tried to handle South Zone's innings in difficult conditions. He made an important partnership of 66 runs with Shreyas Gopal for the sixth wicket. After this, C. added 78 runs with Milind for the seventh wicket. These were the two biggest partnerships of the first innings of South Zone. With the help of these partnerships, the team's score crossed 300 runs, but it was much less than East Zone's score of 708 runs.

By the end of the third day's play, South Zone had scored 246 runs at the loss of 6 wickets. On the fourth day, the team came out to take its innings forward, but the remaining four wickets fell quickly. The team added 90 runs to its score on the fourth day and was all out for 336 runs. Apart from Tilak Verma, Devdutt Padikkal also scored a half-century from South Zone. Padikkal played an inning of 56 runs. However, the rest of the batsmen failed to play big innings, due to which the team could not get close to the East Zone score.

Talking about bowling, Mukesh Kumar was the most successful bowler for East Zone. He took three wickets in the first innings of South Zone. Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Kunin Qureshi got two wickets each. The most important wicket in Kunin Qureshi's account was that of Tilak Verma, who stopped him from scoring a century by sending him to the pavilion on 99 runs. The South Zone team, which was restricted to 336 runs in reply to East Zone's 708 runs in the first innings, now seems to be far behind in the match. At the same time, despite Tilak Verma's brilliant 99 runs, there will definitely be regret for missing out on a century. This innings of the captain played an important role in handling the South Zone in a difficult situation, but the team had to face a big lead.