East Zone score emphatic win

A fine spell of seam bowling by Shib Shankar Paul and an unbroken century partnership between Arindam Das and Vasant Saravanan helped East Zone crush North Zone by nine wickets on the third day of their four-day Duleep Trophy match played in Rajkot on Saturday.

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The other opener Arindam Das (37) and Sarvanan (79) added 118 runs for the second wicket to guide their team to a comfortable win.

Earlier, resuming at their overnight score of 106 for three, North Zone, trailing by 113-run first innings deficit, lost wickets at regular intervals to be dismissed for 240.

While Paul claimed four for 67, S S Rao and skipper Sourav Ganguly picked two wickets each.

At one stage, North were tottering at 169 for 8 but V R V Singh and Amit Mishra helped them reach a respactable total as the duo added 71 runs for the ninth wicket before Singh was bowled by Ganguly for 47 (4x4).

The East skipper struck again in next ball by taking a simple return catch to send back Amit Bhandari.

Mishra remained unbeaten on 36 (4x4).

Ganguly has served notice to the selectors with his knock of 117 in the first innings and a match haul of 4-56 to prove that he is not only recovered from the tennis elbow that kept him out of the first two one-day matches against Sri Lanka later this month but also is in form to stake his claim for the remainder of the series.

With this outright win, East Zone earned two points.

Scorecard

North Zone Ist Innings: 178.

East Zone Ist Innings: 291

North Zone 2nd Innings (Overnight 106-3):
Ravneet Ricky lbw S S Paul 56
Shikher Dhavan c Dasgupta b Paul 49
Gagandeep Singh c Sarvanan b Nadeem  0
Sangram Singh c Ganguly b Paul 7
Dinesh Mongia c Dasgupta b Paul 19
Pankaj Dharmani c Gavaskar b Rao 2
Yashpal Singh c Dasgupta b Bose 11
Sarandeep Singh b Rao 8
Amit Mishra not out 36
V R V Singh b Ganguly 47
Amit Bhandari c & b Ganguly 0
Extras:  5
Total: (All out in 80.2 overs) 240

Fall of wickets: 1-105, 2-106, 3-106, 4-132, 5-135, 6-136, 7-145, 8-169, 9-240.

Bowling: S S Paul 27-6-67-4, R Bose 20-4-59-1, S Ganguly 4.2-0-18-2, S S Rao 15-2-53-2, S Nadeem 14-0-40-1.

East Zone 2nd Innings:
Arindam Das not out 39
S S Das lbw Bhandari 8
V Sarvanan not out 79

Extras: 2
Total: (For 1 wicket in 27.3 overs) 128

Fall of wickets: 1-10.

Bowling: Gagandeep Singh 6-1-27-0, Amit Bhandari 10-2-31-1, V R V Singh 1-0-8-0, Amit Mishra 7-1-29-0, Sarandeep Singh 3.3-0-33-0.