North Zone were 161 for 7, and their No. 9 hit five sixes to drag them to 251

North Zone were 161 for 7 and going nowhere when Anshul Kamboj walked out at the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru. He left with the innings over, 251 on the board and five sixes against his name. The other ten batters managed two between them.

That is the shape of day one of this Duleep Trophy quarter-final. West Zone bowled North Zone out inside 67 overs and still ended the day having to explain how a No. 9 took 90 runs off them for the last three wickets.

Kotian and Deshpande took four each, and the middle order went with them

North Zone won the toss and batted, and for a session and a half it looked a reasonable decision. Ayush Badoni made 51 off 57 with six fours and two sixes. Ayush Doseja dug in at the other end for 42 off 110 balls. They were two down at lunch.

Then it went. Tushar Deshpande had Badoni caught behind for the third wicket at 117, then bowled Abdul Samad at 126. Tanush Kotian, the Mumbai offspinning allrounder, had Doseja caught by Urvil Patel at 146 and the North Zone captain Kanhaiya Wadhawan lbw at 155. Mukesh Choudhary got Nishant Sindhu caught behind at 161. Five wickets for 44 runs, and seven down inside 52 overs.

Kotian finished with 4 for 72 from 20.5 overs. Deshpande took 4 for 57 from 15: Badoni caught behind, Samad bowled, Qamran Iqbal lbw, Abid Mushtaq caught by Kotian.

The No. 9 who top-scored

Kamboj came in at 161 for 7 and was the last man out at 251. His fifty took 49 balls. He finished on 60 off 52 with five fours and five sixes, a strike rate of 115 in an innings where the team scored at 3.75 an over.

Abid Mushtaq stayed with him for a while, making 19 off 30, and the pair put on 48 for the eighth wicket. Arshdeep Singh made 4. Sunil Kumar did not face a ball. Kotian eventually had Kamboj caught by Shams Mulani, which brought up his fourth wicket and ended the innings with 90 runs added since the seventh wicket fell.

Kamboj is a right-arm seamer from Karnal who has played one Test for India, at Old Trafford in July 2025, and who took all ten wickets in a Ranji Trophy innings against Kerala the season before that. Batting is not the reason he is in this team. On Sunday he hit more sixes than the top seven put together.

Shaw went early, and the light went soon after

West Zone had ten overs to survive and lost two wickets in them. Prithvi Shaw hit four boundaries in 21 balls, reached 22, and was bowled by Abid Mushtaq. Harvik Desai made 3 before Arshdeep Singh had him caught by Doseja.

Musheer Khan was 6 not out and Shivalik Sharma had faced one ball when the umpires took the players off for bad light. West Zone closed on 31 for 2, trailing by 220, with Ruturaj Gaikwad still to come.

Abid Mushtaq’s figures at the close read five overs, three maidens, five runs, one wicket. On a pitch where an offspinner and a seamer had just taken four each, that is worth a second look on day two.

What is riding on it

Central Zone and South Zone are already through to the semi-finals as last season’s winners and runners-up, so these two quarter-finals decide who joins them. In the other one, at the Centre of Excellence’s second ground, East Zone reached 355 for 6 against North East Zone on the back of hundreds from Sudip Gharami and Shahbaz Ahmed.

The semi-finals run from 30 August to 2 September, and the final from 6 to 10 September. West Zone resume 220 behind with eight wickets in hand and Gaikwad and Shardul Thakur still to bat. North Zone have 251 and a pitch that has already given their bowlers something.

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