Shahbaz Ahmed made 167 and took four wickets, and East Zone won inside three days
Two five-wicket hauls, a 167 from the player of the match, and a quarter-final that never got close. East Zone are through to the Duleep Trophy semi-finals.
Aug 25, 2026
North East Zone won the toss in Bengaluru and put East Zone in. Three days later, in a match scheduled for four, they had been bowled out twice and beaten by an innings and 210 runs.
East Zone made 467 and then took twenty wickets for 257 runs across two North East Zone innings, 111 in the first and 146 in the second after the follow-on. The win puts them into a Duleep Trophy semi-final against Central Zone, who sat out the quarter-finals along with South Zone.
Shahbaz Ahmed did most of it himself
Shahbaz Ahmed batted for 244 balls for 167, the highest score of the match, with 17 fours and four sixes. He was the last man out, having watched the lower order come and go around him and added 103 with Anukul Roy for the seventh wicket.
Then he bowled. His left-arm spin took 3 for 20 from ten overs in the first innings and 1 for 53 in the second, which made him the obvious choice as player of the match. Sudip Kumar Gharami’s 146 gave the innings its spine alongside him, and Kumar Kushagra’s 55 was the only other score above 40.
Two five-fors in three days
Abhijit Sarkar’s first-innings figures read 9.5-2-20-5. North East Zone were 106 for 6 and still respectable; they lost their last four wickets for five runs and were all out for 111, which is how a first-innings deficit of 356 happens.
The second innings went the same way with a different bowler. Anukul Roy took 5 for 37 from 15 overs, and only two batters passed 25. Pheiroijam Jotin’s 39 and Akash Choudhary’s 27 dragged the total past 100, then Roy had Jotin stumped to finish the match.
Sooryavanshi got two, Shami got none
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is in the side as a batter, and at 15 he did not get much of a go at it, out for 8 in the second over of the match. He was more use with the ball. Three overs in the second innings, 2 for 11.
Mohammed Shami sent down 14 overs across the two innings and did not take a wicket. He conceded 46 runs and made 11 with the bat.
Ishan Kishan captained the side and kept wicket, and while he made only 4, he was involved in six dismissals behind the stumps: five in the second innings, including two stumpings across the match.
Central Zone next
Both semi-finals start on 30 August, on the two grounds at the same Bengaluru complex. East Zone play Central Zone, last season’s champions, who went straight through along with the runners-up South Zone. South Zone take the winner of the other quarter-final between North Zone and West Zone.
The final is scheduled for the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai from 6 September.
East Zone have not had to work especially hard to get there. They batted once, bowled North East Zone out twice, and had a day in hand.