East Zone lost five wickets for 138, and Gharami and Shahbaz added 150 together

India’s red-ball domestic season began on Sunday with two quarter-finals at the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, and by the time rain and bad light closed the two grounds, both had produced a recovery from a position nobody would have chosen.

East Zone were 138 for 5 at lunch

North East Zone won the toss on Ground 2, put East Zone in, and had five wickets by the 30th over. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi went for 8 off 6 balls. Abhimanyu Easwaran made 15. Ishan Kishan, captaining, was caught behind for 4, and East Zone went to lunch on 138 for 5 with Mohammed Shami, Mukesh Kumar and Abhijit Sarkar still to bat.

Sudip Kumar Gharami and Shahbaz Ahmed then batted together for 208 balls and put on 150. Gharami had been at the crease since the sixth over and watched most of the collapse happen around him. He reached his hundred off 131 balls and fell for 146, an innings of 185 balls with 25 fours in it.

Shahbaz was the slower half of the stand and finished the day on exactly 100, off 137 balls with nine fours and two sixes, when rain ended play at 80 overs. East Zone closed on 355 for 6. Pheiroijam Jotin took 3 for 53 for North East Zone and Akash Choudhary 2 for 64.

Anshul Kamboj hit five sixes batting at No. 9

On Ground 1, North Zone chose to bat and spent most of the day regretting it. Ayush Badoni made 51 off 57 and Ayush Doseja ground out 42 off 110, but at 161 for 7 the innings had the shape of one that finishes under 200.

Anshul Kamboj decided otherwise. He came in at No. 9 and made 60 off 52 balls with five sixes, adding 48 for the eighth wicket with Abid Mushtaq and then dragging the total from 220 for 9 to 251 with Sunil Kumar at the other end. Kamboj was the last man out, in the 67th over.

Tanush Kotian finished with 4 for 72 from 20.5 overs and Tushar Deshpande 4 for 57, which is a reasonable day’s work for a West Zone attack that also has Shardul Thakur in it.

West Zone lost two before the light went

West Zone had ten overs to survive and did not manage it cleanly. Prithvi Shaw made 22 off 21, four boundaries in it, and was bowled by Abid Mushtaq. Harvik Desai was caught for 3 off Arshdeep Singh. Musheer Khan was 6 not out when bad light ended the day with West Zone 31 for 2, trailing by 220, and Ruturaj Gaikwad still padded up.

Mushtaq’s figures at the close read 5-3-5-1, which tells you as much about the last half hour as the scoreboard does.

What the winners get

Both matches run to 26 August. The two winners go through to semi-finals that start on 30 August against Central Zone and South Zone, who did not have to play this week: Central won last season’s final and South lost it, and both were given byes on that basis.

For most of the 44 players in Bengaluru this week, this is the first red-ball cricket selectors will watch this season, and the thing worth being watched for is five Tests against Australia between January and March. West Indies arrive first, from late September, but that tour is all white-ball. On the evidence of day one, the two who helped themselves most were a 27-year-old from Bengal who has been close to this conversation for a while, and a No. 9 seamer who spent the afternoon hitting sixes.

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