BENGALURU: The victorious South Zone team sang 'Yeh dosti hum nahin todenge', the iconic friendship-themed song from the movie 'Sholay' after they wrapped up a 75-run win over West Zone in the Duleep Trophy final here on Sunday.
Drawn from seven state units, the South team gelled well under the captaincy of Hanuma Vihari with visible camaraderie on the field.
“Although we come from different states, we enjoyed each other’s company. If you want to win a tournament, you should come together, and my job was to make sure to create that environment. Credit to everyone for thinking
in the right direction, sometimes you can think of personal causes and performances. But I think each one of them
was always thinking about the team,” opined Vihari.
The win was redemption for Vihari, who was the losing captain last season when South Zone’s slender first-innings lead was buried under a victory target of 529.
One of the masterstrokes from Vihari was to bring in a disciplined and economical V Koushik in the XI in place
of fellow medium pacer KV Sasikanth.
“The reason why I picked Koushik ahead of Sasi was because in the semifinal there was a bit of lack of discipline, so we needed to contain and pick wickets at the same time. Vyshak (Vijaykumar) is a wicket-taking bowler but sometimes he can leak runs. Koushik is experienced and knows the conditions well. So, I thought picking him would give us control and help us contain runs.”
Vihari hoped for the cloudy weather of the past couple of weeks to remain on Sunday morning.
“When I woke up this morning, I was hoping that the sun would not come out and when it did not, I was happy. If Sarfaraz (Khan) was there today, he could have handled the spells of Vidwath and Koushik but getting his wicket in the last session (on Saturday) was the turning point,” said the 29-year-old.
It was one of the lowest scoring Duleep Trophy finals in recent times, with no centurions and Vihari said lack
of application from batters was the reason.
(AI image)
