Cooch Behar Trophy enters climactic phase

This season's edition of the Cooch Behar Trophy enters its climactic knockout phase from Friday in Pune. The Under-19 tournament is one of the prime vehicles for catapulting young talent into national attention. You only have to think of last year's final in Jamshedpur when an unknown 18-year-old called Yuvraj Singh belted an astonishing 358 as Punjab piled up 839/5 to beat hosts Bihar on first innings. With just two teams making it through from each zone, unlike the Ranji Trophy, the scramble for qualifying berths was tight. Among the prominent casualties in the preliminary stages were Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Hyderabad and Delhi.

Defending champions Punjab pipped Delhi to take the second spot from North Zone, behind Haryana. In the absence of Yuvraj, Ravneet Ricky and Manish Sharma this season, they managed to scrape through despite losing on first innings to both Haryana and Delhi. In the latter match, Delhi skipper Gautam Gambhir carried his bat through for a magnificent 218, arguably the innings of the tournament, contributing more than 68% of the total of 320. Haryana comfortably finished on top, inflicting a crushing eight wicket victory over Delhi. A good allround side, Maninder Bisla and Ishan Ganda spearheaded Haryana's batting while leg spinner Anurag Mishra and the seam attack of N Agarwal & Joginder Sharma scalped 61 victims between them.

Karnataka topped the South Zone table with Andhra coming through in second place, just ahead of Hyderabad. Karnataka's triumph over Tamil Nadu in Madras was the engine that powered them to the head of the group. In a match where the bowlers reigned supreme with left-arm tweaker Vidyuth Sivaramakrishnan and off spinner Mulewa Dharmichand claiming ten wicket hauls, the key innings was played by Deepak Chougule. He made an unbeaten 97 in Karnataka's first innings of 159, his ten colleagues making 45 between them. Andhra were bolstered by the brothers Venugopala Rao and Gyaneswara Rao, both of whom averaged over 100 in five matches each.

Mumbai's decline continued as they failed to progress to the knockouts for the second year running, finishing third behind Gujarat and Maharashtra in the West Zone league. A three wicket loss to Gujarat at the Wankhede Stadium, despite taking a first innings lead of 90, was a blow from which Mumbai never recovered. Gujarat chased down a target of 262 in the 49th over with time just about running out. The clash saw Mumbai miss the talents of their skipper and opening batsman Vinayak Mane who averaged 75 in three other games in the league. Second placed Maharashtra banked largely on the allround prowess of Kashinath Khadilkar who hit 329 runs, including a double hundred, and took 14 wickets with his offbreaks.

Tripura were the surprise packet in the East Zone, qualifying ahead of fancied rivals, Orissa and last year's runners-up Bihar. Opening bowlers Jayanta Debnath and Tushar Saha were the main architects of their success, collecting 35 wickets between them. For Bengal, the other qualifier, it was the batsmen who played a leading role, especially Arindam Das and Subhomoy Das. In the Central Zone league, not one of the ten games ended in an outright result and in a closely fought race, Madhya Pradesh and Railways edged out Rajasthan. MP leg spinner Jitendra Likhar (19 wickets) and Railways batsman Surinder Singh (280 runs) were the standout performers.

All the knockout matches are to be played in Pune. Six teams, Punjab, Haryana, Bengal, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra have received byes into the quarter finals. The two remaining spots will be decided by pre-quarter final games beginning on Monday. Gujarat take on Railways and hosts Maharashtra square off against Karnataka. All matches are of three days duration except the final which will be played over four days. The title match will be played from December 13 to 16.