West Zone, Central Zone register easy victories
West Zone and Central Zone defeated East Zone and North Zone in their Deodhar Trophy matches held in Hyderabad and Bangalore respectively.
In Hyderabad, West Zone reached the victory target of 226 set by the East in only the 40th over losing only 4 wickets. This big victory gave the winners a valuable bonus point as well. For East Zone, under-19 player Saurabh Tiwary shone again with the bat scoring an excellent 65. While opener Arindam Das made 47, former India captain Saurav Ganguly was dismissed for a fluent 30. For the West under-19 spinner Iqbal Abdulla, veteran Ajit Agarkar and Venugopal Rao claimed two wickets apiece.
West Zone comfortably achieved the target despite losing Yousuf Pathan early in the innings. Skipper Wasim Jaffer (48), A Rahane (60) and A Nayar (49 not out) played excellent knocks giving East Zone no chance of coming back into the match.
In Bangalore, Central Zone easily beat North Zone by 70 runs. In reply to the Central’s massive score of 293 for 3, North Zone were all out for 223 in 42.2 overs.
For Central Zone, N Ojha scored 110 and useful contributions were made by F Fazal (66), Suresh Raina (42) and captain Mohammad Kaif (34 not out). The North Zone bowlers proved expensive and lacked the necessary penetration to trouble the batsmen.
R P Singh sent the North Zone reeling by dismissing all the four top order batsmen including Akash Chopra and Gautam Gambhir with the score reading only 12. He finally finished with 5 for 36. Virender Sehwag (81), U Kaul (55) and A Mishra (43) tried to turn things around, but their efforts were in vain.
