![]() The East Zone and North Zone teams played against each other in the first match of the Duleep Trophy, 1962-63 and the match was held at Calcutta from 31 December, 1962 - 02 January, 1963. The East Zone captain, P Roy won the toss and took the decision of batting first in the match. However, his decision was not well supported by his teammates, as the East Zone team scored only 160 runs in their first innings. Only the opener, S Das could play well for East Zone, as he scored 60 runs in the first innings. The North Zone bowlers like C Watson and W Ghosh took 4 wickets, each for their team. The North Zone team gave a good performance in their first innings and scored a total of 266 runs to get a lead of 106 runs over East Zone in the first innings. P Bhatia scored a wonderful century for North Zone in the first innings and G Inder Dev also played well. S Kundu bowled brilliantly for East Zone and took 6 wickets for only 63 runs, while D Mukherjee took 3 wickets. Trailing by 106 runs, the East Zone team failed to bat well in their second innings also and got all out for only 139 runs to set an easy target of 34 runs to win for North Zone. The North Zone team easily achieved the target and scored 37 runs without losing any wicket to win the match by a huge margin of 10 wickets. The team also entered into the Semi-Finals of the Duleep Trophy, 1962-63. The first Semi-Final match of the Duleep Trophy, 1962-63 was played between the teams of North Zone and West Zone and the two teams played the match at Delhi from 12-14 January, 1963. The match saw the North Zone captain, V Mehra winning the toss and deciding to bat first. The North Zone team scored a good total of 316 runs in their first innings, thanks to a superb century knock by Akash Lal. The other batsmen like M Sood and G Inder Dev also played well for North Zone. B Gupte and C Borde took 5 and 4 wickets, respectively for West Zone in the innings. In reply to the 316 runs made by North Zone in the first innings, the West Zone team displayed some wonderful batting performances and scored a huge total of 434 runs in their first innings. The batsmen like S Adhikari and P Umrigar scored individual centuries for West Zone and helped their team to take a huge lead of 118 runs over North Zone in the first innings. The North Zone team played well in their second innings as well and scored 181 runs from 31 overs. The stipulated duration of the match was over by that time and the match officials declared the West Zone team as the winner of the match for having a lead in the first innings. The West Zone team also reached the Final of Duleep Trophy, 1962-63 by winning the match. The teams of South Zone and Central Zone played against each other in the second Semi-Final match of the Duleep Trophy, 1962-63. The match took place at Bangalore from 12-14 January, 1963 and the South Zone team fielded first in the match, after winning the toss. Put into bat first by the South Zone captain, A Kripal Singh, the Central Zone team played well and scored 363 runs in their first innings. H Singh became the star for Central Zone by scoring a century and V Manjrekar and K Rungta also played well for Central Zone in the first innings. The South Zone team batted well in their first innings, while replying to 363 runs made by Central Zone and they scored 237 runs for 6 wickets. However, the match was declared as a drawn one by the match officials, when the South Zone team reached the score. The match officials also declared the South Zone team as the winner of the match and allowed it to play against West Zone in the Final of Duleep Trophy, 1962-63. The match between the teams of South Zone and West Zone was the Final of the Duleep Trophy, 1962-63 and the two teams played the match at Calcutta from 24-27 January, 1963. Winning the toss, the captain of South Zone, M Jaisimha decided to bat first in the match. His decision of batting first was not the right one, as the South Zone team failed to bat well and got all out for only 132 runs in their first innings. B Gupte bowled one of the best spells in the history of Indian cricket in this match and took 9 wickets for only 55 runs. This was really an outstanding performance by a bowler and only P Belliappa could stand before Gupte for sometime in the innings, while scoring 48 runs. In reply to the mere total of 132 runs by South Zone, the West Zone batsmen showed their brilliance and talent to the most and scored a huge total of 415 runs in their first innings. Both the batsmen like S Adhikari and P Umrigar scored 103 runs, each for West Zone. As A Wadekar also scored 93 runs, the West Zone team eventually took a huge lead of 283 runs in the first innings. The South Zone team showed a better performance in their second innings and scored 263 runs before getting all out. The batsmen like A Baig and M Jaisimha played well for South Zone in the second innings. Thus, the West Zone team won the match quite comprehensively with a wonderful margin of an innings and 20 runs and clinched the championship title of the Duleep Trophy, 1962-63. |