Duleep Trophy final – Ishan Kishan, Tilak Varma and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to play T20Is immediately after

Ishan Kishan and Tilak Varma agree that the short turnaround between the five-day Duleep Trophy final in Chennai and the three-match T20I series against Afghanistan in Delhi will be challenging, but they backed themselves to reacquaint themselves with white-ball cricket after captaining East Zone and South Zone respectively in the Duleep Trophy final starting Sunday.

Apart from Kishan and Tilak Varma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is East Zone’s vice-captain, has to contend with a three-day gap between the Duleep Trophy final and the Afghanistan T20Is too.

“I don’t know. How do I tell you? It’s just about knowing what format you are playing,” Kishan said on the eve of the Duleep final at Chepauk. “Sometimes it gets difficult when you are playing a Test match and suddenly you have to go and start hitting from ball one and suddenly you have to go back to your domestic team and you have to play a whole different role. But at the same time, I feel, as professionals it’s our job to adapt, we cannot be coming up with excuses after knowing this is like your routine for next few days.

“So, it is better to not be in a situation where we have to make excuses but at the same time be aware and be just mindful of what is going to happen and I will be playing T20 after this. So my job will be different [in T20Is], but still I feel we are getting two days of practice before the Afghanistan first game, so it will be more than enough, I feel.”

Having played all three formats, including List A matches for India A in Sri Lanka, over the past four months, Tilak Varma leans on his experience to switch seamlessly between formats.

“We have played enough domestic games, we have played in every condition, so we can adjust to the conditions,” Tilak Varma said. “But it will be slightly challenging playing five days here and again joining the [T20I] team. But from here we are going to Delhi, there will be two days of break, so we can practice there and we have enough time as well, but it will be slightly challenging. We know how to change our mindsets and maintain our body with good fluids and everything, so we have played back-to-back games before in the domestic as well and international, so we are quite used to it.”

Kishan hails Shami’s intensity ahead of 100th first-class game

Mohammed Shami last played for India in the Champions Trophy in 2025 and is not being considered fit enough for Test cricket, but he continues to soldier on in domestic cricket. In the lead-up to the Duleep Trophy final, which will be Shami’s 100th first-class game, East Zone captain Kishan delivered a glowing appraisal of the 36-year-old’s hunger to keep toiling away in domestic cricket despite not being in national reckoning right now.

“I feel age is just a number,” Kishan said. “If he is working hard it doesn’t matter – he has been doing so well. Having him in our team, it gives us a bit of more confidence, when you have such bowlers in your team who can get you wickets and especially looking at Shami bhai this season, his intensity, his energy has been very different.

“It has been three years since that [2023] World Cup [when he was in excellent form]; it is hard when you are not regularly playing for Indian team and to again have that same kind of motivation for your domestic games, it is tough. But I feel I see that hunger in him because who better than me can judge about hunger right now?

“I think he has that hunger and that motivation right now. He wants to do that comeback, he wants to be part of Indian squad again and which you can see in him, when he is trying to help me also when I’m leading the side… he is trying to come to me, give me options of what you can do right now.”

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