Over the last few years, Vidarbha have emerged as power-houses on the Ranji Trophy map. This year too, in the 2024-25 season, they have entered the final, after beating Gujarat Now, the team management has announced an unchanged 17-member squad for the summit clash against Kerala, starting Wednesday.
Ranji Trophy Final, Vidarbha vs Kerala
The match will be played in the VCA Stadium in Nagpur. “VCA’s senior selection committee, which met on Monday (February 25, 2025), decided to retain the same squad that did duty in the semi-final against Mumbai. Akshay Wadkar will lead the side,” the Vidarbha Cricket Association said on Monday (February 25, 2025).
Vidarbha, who have remained unbeaten this year, would like to make amends from the last year’s final, where they lost against Mumbai. The 42-time champions had won the match by a massive 169 runs. But this time around, Vidarbha beat them by 80 runs in the semis.
Kerala Eye First Title
On the other hand, first-time finalists Kerala are the lucky to be in the last match. First they beat J&K in quarters by 1-run lead in the first innings, and then the same happened with Gujarat as well, where they had a lead of only 2 runs. Meanwhile, this will be the fourth final for the Akshay Wadkar-led team — having played the championship match in 2017-18 and 2018-19, followed by last year.
The team will bank majorly on batter Yash Rathod, who has scored 933 runs in 9 matches this year, at an average of 58, and bowler Harsh Dubey, who has 66 wickets this season.
Vidarbha Squad: Akshay Wadkar (c&wk), Atharva Taide, Aman Mokhade, Yash Rathod, Harsh Dubey, Akshay Karnewar, Yash Kadam, Akshay Wakhare, Aditya Thakare, Darshan Nalkande, Nachiket Bhute, Siddhesh Wath (wk), Yash Thakur, Danish Malewar, Parth Rekhade, Karun Nair, Dhruv Shorey.
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