Duleep Trophy Match 3, Review: India Blue smoothly sails into the final

India Blue settled for a dominating draw with India Green to smoothly sail into the finals of the Duleep Trophy. The final day’s play was a simple and easy affair for the Gautam Gambhir-led side. After restricting India Red for 298 in the 3rd innings, the India Green side finished on 179/4 at stumps to draw the game.

India Blue was clearly the team with the advantage right from the day one, amassing a mammoth 707 in the first innings. After winning the toss, they first tired out the India Green bowler, racking up 707 in the first innings.

Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, and Sheldon Jackson struck mighty centuries. India Green was not able to give a solid reply and could manage only 237 batting second giving a huge 470 run lead.

The India Blue side decided to add on the lead and batted again to pile an additional 298 to the lead and set a massive 769 runs. The India Green batting failed big time after a good start. Mayank Agarwal and Gautam Gambhir gave a brisk start to the inning and ended at 85/0.

However, the last day’s play did not begin well for the Green side as Jajaj Saxena snapped both the openers in back to back overs to trigger the downfall. Gambhir began with an attacking approach a quickly completed hi 50 but was soon after was clean bowled by Saxena. Agarwal, too, couldn’t survive long and added just 9 runs to his overnight score of 49 before getting out to Saxena.

Dinesh Kartik and Sheldon Jackson then added some runs steadily. Kartik soon departed but Jackson continued batting till the end of the innings and remained not out.

India Green, after being put into bat again, dragged the game till the final session and eventually end at 179/4 with the help of half century from Murali Vijay (73) and Robin Uthappa (66).

The India Blue will meet India Red in the final which be held at the same venue on 10th September.

Brief Scores

India Blue: 707 & 298 (C Pujara 166; S Gopal 5/173)

India Green: 237 all out & 179/ 4 in 234 overs (R Uthappa 66; K Sharma 2/68)