Ishan Kishan’s East Zone did not just win the Duleep Trophy. They smothered South Zone under a mountain of runs and time, then calmly signed off on the fifth morning with the air of a side that had known the result a day in advance.
By stumps on day four, East were 212 for 5, already 584 ahead. The trophy was effectively locked away in the dressing room. Any hope of late drama vanished when Kishan chose not to declare overnight. Instead, he sent his batters back out with a simple brief: keep batting, keep grinding, leave nothing to chance.
South Zone’s quicks finally found some life in the surface under overcast skies. The new ball nipped, the seamers hit better lengths, and for a fleeting spell the champions-in-waiting looked human. Kumar Kushagra, the centurion hero of the first innings, added only 12 more before departing. Mohammed Siraj, as ever, found the right notes, bending the ball and the batters’ patience.
But the door never truly opened.
At No. 7, Md Kounain Quraishi dug in with the calm of a veteran, not a man in just his second first-class game. He blocked, left, and waited. At the other end, Anukul Roy did the opposite. Once set, he shifted gears with almost casual ease, stepping out to Tripurana Vijay and lifting him for a pair of sixes that underlined East Zone’s dominance.
The pressure told on South Zone in a different way. Desperate for anything resembling a breakthrough, they burned through all three reviews by the 76th over. By lunch, the scorecard had the look of a long, slow suffocation: Quraishi unbeaten on 76, Roy on 37, both settled, both unhurried, the lead swelling into absurd territory.
Spin took over after the break. It changed nothing. Roy ticked off his half-century, rotating strike, picking off anything loose. Quraishi kept marshalling the innings, inching towards a personal landmark that would turn this from a supporting role into a headline performance.
When his moment came, he seized it in style. Maiden first-class hundred, in a Duleep Trophy final, for East Zone, with the game already buried under a 700-plus lead. He marked it the way this East side has played all season: with intent. Two more towering sixes off Vijay pushed the lead beyond 750 and the match deep into farce for South Zone’s attack.
Roy finally fell in the 99th over, ending a 150-run stand that had long since broken South Zone’s resistance. One over later, Kishan walked in, shook hands, and declared. No need for theatrics. East Zone had their third Duleep title.
For Kishan, this was more than another trophy. It extended a domestic captaincy streak that now reads like a statement: unbeaten in 16 first-class games, Duleep Trophy champion, and fresh off a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy win the previous season. His match aggregate of 350 runs, the highest ever in a Duleep Trophy game, earned him Player of the Match and underlined his authority over the contest.
The Jharkhand imprint on this triumph ran deep. Kushagra’s first-innings ton set the platform, Quraishi’s hundred sealed the humiliation, and Shikhar Mohan chipped in with runs across the game. Kishan himself spoke of his time away from the Indian team as a “transformation,” a phase that made him calmer, more aware of situations, yet still ravenous for runs and results. The evidence is piling up in his favour.
On the other side, Tilak Varma, the South Zone captain, walked away with the Player of the Series award but also with a lingering regret. He admitted he fell short on the opening day, a failure that helped East Zone build that monstrous 708-run first-innings lead which ultimately decided the final.
By the time the formalities ended, the numbers told their own story. This was the third-highest aggregate in any Duleep Trophy game. Kishan stood at the centre of it all, a captain who has forgotten how to lose in red-ball cricket.
The question now is not what this title means for East Zone. It is what this version of Ishan Kishan does next.
