Chennai: The south Indian derby is the highlight of the Ranji Trophy quarter-finals that begins at various venues from Friday.
Tamil Nadu, who finished third in Group A, will take on their arch-rivals Karnataka at Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Stadium in Vizag. When the two teams met last time, it was Karnataka who had the last laugh in the final of the 2014-2015 season. That match has a special place in the Ranji history as it was the first time a triple century was made in the summit clash of the country’s premier domestic tournament and it was Karun Nair who achieved the feat.
Karun will be the cynosure of eyes once again as the Bengaluru batsman is fresh from his unbeaten triple hundred against England at the Chepauk Test. Tamil Nadu had named R. Ashwin and Murali Vijay in their squad but the duo have pulled out with injuries. Karnataka hold all the aces possessing an enviable line-up of Karun, K.L. Rahul and Manish Pandey. Tamil Nadu, packed with youngsters, have been performing consistently this season under their new coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar. TN’s one-drop Kaushik Gandhi has scored 709 runs in eight matches with an impressive average of 70.90, while pace trio of K. Vignesh, T. Natarajan and Aswin Crist have picked 76 wickets.
Karnataka skipper Vinay Kumar (27 wickets) and Sreenath Arvind (26 wickets) have been in-form and along with K. Gowtham (27 wickets).
At Raipur, defending champions Mumbai, who finished on top in Group A, face Hyderabad.
Hyderabad, who had finished at the second last position in Group C last season, qualified for the quarter-finals under the leadership of S. Badrinath.
Mumbai have not lost a single game this season and will be without the services of Akhil Herwadkar, who was instrumental in their fortunes and will also miss Dhawal Kulkarni in the all-important match.
At Jaipur, Gujarat will take on Odisha. The focus will be on Gujarat batsman Priyank Panchal who has already massed more than 1,000 runs this season. Priyank has smashed four centuries, including a triple hundred against Punjab and a double against Mumbai, and another big one could be on the cards, at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium. Gujarat will be boosted by the return of Parthiv Patel from national duty against a team who are playing in the knockout stage of the tournamentfor the first time since 2001.
