East Zone won the Duleep Trophy final based on the lead they secured in the first innings. After scoring a massive 708 runs, East Zone managed to bundle out South Zone for just 336 runs, attaining a massive lead of 372 runs. However, East Zone batted again and scored 388/7 before both captains have Ishan Kishan and Tilak Varma have decided to end the game.

Former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar was unhappy with East Zone’s approach to winning the game in the way he did. He wanted Kishan’s men to try and push for an outright win and also questioned the tactics of both the captains to wait as long as they did and call off the game prematurely, which Gavaskar felt could have been done even before the Lunch break, by which time the result was clear.

“The disappointing part was that East Zone did not go for an outright win and instead prolonged their second innings unnecessarily. That both skippers agreed to end the game earlier than scheduled also doesn’t sit well. If the game was to be stopped early, then why wasn’t it stopped at lunchtime itself, when it was clear that in the two sessions remaining, South Zone was never going to chase down a score of more than 650 runs,” Gavaskar wrote in his Mid-day column.

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“It’s a good sign for Indian cricket to see a team with just one big name in batting and one big name in bowling lift the trophy. What it shows is that if a team is well-led and combines well, then they can win matches and trophies,” he added.

Gavaskar also pointed out the fact that the first-innings lead, which can produce wins in domestic cricket, can be detrimental for Indian cricket as a whole and pointed to the result of the second Test between India and Sri Lanka in the recently concluded series in Colombo, where India failed to bowl out Sri Lanka in the second innings.

“This business of the first innings lead being enough is one of the main reasons India struggle to take 20 wickets on good pitches. How does a team learn to take 20 wickets if they don’t bowl in two innings in a domestic game? India huffed and puffed on the last day of the second Test in Sri Lanka and couldn’t take the last four wickets for a victory,” said Gavaskar.