The winner-take-all final day in Bengaluru had a winner by mid-afternoon. South Zone chased down a target of 181 to beat North Zone by seven wickets, booking their place in the Duleep Trophy final against East Zone.
North Zone had resumed the day on 256/7, a 139-run lead with three second-innings wickets in hand, and pushed that lead further before being bowled out for 297. Combined with their first-innings 195, that left South Zone — who had made 312 in their own first innings — needing 181 to win. MD Nidheesh did the bulk of the damage in that second innings, finishing with 5/56, his tenth first-class five-wicket haul, with Kavuri Saiteja chipping in 2/57.
South Zone never let the target get away from them. Narayan Jagadeesan (42) and Ricky Bhui (43) laid the platform, and captain Tilak Varma saw the innings home with an unbeaten 51, closing on 182/3. It capped a match Varma had already shaped with the bat — his first-innings century, which he carried through to an unbeaten 116, was the platform South Zone's 312 was built on in the first place.
Last season's runners-up now get a shot at going one better. South Zone will face Ishan Kishan's East Zone — who beat Central Zone by four wickets in the other semi-final, with Mohammed Shami taking five wickets in that match — in the Duleep Trophy final at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, from September 6 to 10. It's a final built almost entirely on individual stories that have defined this year's tournament: Varma's captaincy and batting form for South Zone, and East Zone's Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who broke a 57-year-old record for the youngest Duleep Trophy fifty during the group stage, against Shami's renewed pace threat.
North Zone won't take much comfort from the scoreline, but their fightback from a 117-run first-innings deficit to set South Zone 181 — built on fifties from Sanat Sangwan and half-centuries lower down the order across the match — showed a side capable of competing with bat and ball for three and a half days against eventual finalists. That gives their younger contributors a genuine platform heading into the rest of the domestic season.
Track build-up to the September 6 final and every ball from Chennai on SportGod's live matches page, and revisit how South Zone reached this point in our Day 2 report on Varma's century and Sooryavanshi's record. Build fantasy lineups for the final once squads are confirmed in SportGod's free contests.
Match result, scores and individual figures are verified against same-day reporting from Bengaluru, current as of September 2, 2026.
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