Duleep Trophy 2023 | New season of domestic cricket will start from this day, experienced and young players will get a chance to prove themselves

Bengaluru: When the new season of Indian domestic cricket begins with the Duleep Trophy 2023 here on Wednesday, experienced and young players will get a chance to prove their mettle in the red-ball format. The quarterfinals of the tournament will see Central Zone take on East Zone at Alur while North Zone will take on the challenge of Northeast Zone at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. The winners of these matches will face West Zone and South Zone in the semi-finals. West Zone and South Zone will have direct entry into the last four stage due to having reached the finals of the previous season. The teams going into action on Wednesday will primarily aim to seal a place in the last four but the selectors will be eyeing some fresh names over the next fortnight as the Indian team goes through a transition. The Indian team will need more options in the upcoming World Test Championship (WTC) and the Duleep Trophy players will also get an opportunity for the selectors. Also Read: The upcoming WTC season for the Indian team begins with the West Indies tour from July 12. During this, Rinku Singh’s name is included in the players who will have the most eyes. It will be interesting to see the performance of the left-hander, who has dominated the Indian Premier League with his bat, in the red ball format in the new season. Rinku, who was included in the Central Zone team, impressed in the Ranji Trophy last season, scoring 442 runs in seven matches at an average of almost 62. His first-class career record is also impressive. He has scored 2875 runs in 40 matches with the help of seven centuries and 19 half-centuries and during this period his average is 59.89. This East Zone captain Abhimanyu Easwaran has been on the threshold of making a place in the Indian Test team for a long time. He has scored runs for India A and Bengal. The batsman, who made his first-class debut in 2013, has 6556 runs in 87 matches. The batsman, who has suffered failure in big matches, will have another chance to impress the selectors. Among the bowlers too, there are many contenders for India. The 29-year-old Mukesh Kumar, who represented Bengal in the Ranji Trophy, has already made it to the Indian team. He is included in the list of players who can take forward the country’s fast bowling in future. In the last Ranji Trophy season (2022-23), Mukesh took 22 wickets in 5 matches for Bengal, forming a formidable trio with Akash Deep and Ishan Porel. Madhya Pradesh’s Avesh Khan also took 38 wickets in eight matches in the last Ranji season. Big names like Cheteshwar Pujara, Suryakumar Yadav, Hanuma Vihari, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan, Washington Sundar will be seen in the semi-finals early next month. Schedule: Wednesday at 09:30 am North Zone vs North East Zone: Chinnaswamy Stadium Central Zone vs East Zone: Alur