By East Zone ended a 13-year Duleep Trophy drought, winning the 2026 final against South Zone on first-innings lead at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium.
Ishan Kishan led the charge with an extraordinary 350 runs across the match — 270 in the first innings and 80 in the second — and was named Player of the Match.
East Zone’s first innings score of 708 proved decisive, as South Zone were dismissed for 336 in their reply.
Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shikhar Mohan and Kumar Kushagra all played key supporting roles with the bat in East Zone’s dominant innings.
The final, which ran from September 6 to 10, ended without an outright result, with East Zone declared champions on first-innings lead.
South Zone were bowled out for 336 in reply to East Zone’s first innings, leaving them 372 runs behind and facing an uphill task for the remainder of the match.
The Duleep Trophy is decided on first-innings lead when a match doesn’t produce an outright result within the scheduled days, as was the case in this final.
The final was played at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, running from September 6 to 10.
Ishan Kishan’s Player of the Match award recognised his rare feat of scoring a double-century and a half-century in the same first-class match.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the teenage batting prospect, was part of East Zone’s title-winning squad, gaining valuable first-class experience in a high-stakes final.
East Zone’s bowlers also played a key role in restricting South Zone to 336, setting up the platform from which Kishan’s batting sealed the outright title on lead.
East Zone’s title win ends a 13-year wait for the trophy, their last Duleep Trophy triumph having come well over a decade ago.
Ishan Kishan’s aggregate of 350 runs across both innings — 270 and 80 — is among the most dominant individual performances in a Duleep Trophy final.
Ishan Kishan, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
