Saurabh leaves East Zone reeling; all-round North Zone continue to dominate

Saurabh Kumar's four wickets helped Central Zone take a big step towards the Duleep Trophy semi-final ahead of the final day's play against East Zone in Alur. Saurabh's wickets included the Bengal trio of Abhimanyu Easwaran, Anustup Majumdar and Shahbaz Ahmed, as East ended the third evening at 69 for 6, another 231 runs away from their target of 300.

East's slide began with Saurabh dismissing captain Abhimanyu early in the sixth over to get Abhimanyu for 11. Three overs later, Avesh Khan got into the action by dismissing Sudip Kumar Gharami for a duck. And before Shantanu Mishra and Majumdar had hardly even settled down, Saurabh removed Majumdar for 13, as East started losing their way.

They lost 4 for 33 in a middle-order collapse - losing the last three wickets for just eight runs - as Saurabh ended with figures of 4 for 33, while Avesh and Shivam Mavi got one wicket each. Before that, Central had had a slide of their won, losing all ten wickets while adding only 115 after the opening partnership fetched 124.

Himanshu Mantri got 68 while Vivek Singh hit 56, but once Ishan Porel bowled Vivek to break the first-wicket stand, East found a way back. Porel finished with 3 for 15 - he got Upendra Yadav and Saurabh off back-to-back balls in the 69th over - while Shahbaz took 3 for 66 to restrict Central to 239 after they were 60 ahead in the first innings. However, the day eventually belonged to Central.

North Zone warmed up for the semi-final by continuing to dominate over North East Zone in Bengaluru. Set an improbable 666 to win, North East lost three early wickets on the third evening.

The day had begun when they were 65 for 3 in the first innings, where they soon folded for 134 to hand North a huge first-innings lead of 406. Siddarth Kaul and Pulkit Narang grabbed three wickets each to secure that for North.

However, North chose not to ask North East to follow-on, instead opting to bat again despite the huge advantage, and their bowlers having bowled only 39.2 overs spread across two days. They were 23 for 2 in their second innings, before the middle order got down to some batting practice. Ankit Kalsi and Prabhsimran Singh added 83 before Kalsi fell one short of a fifty. Prabhsimran went on to hit a quick 59 with nine fours and a six.

It was then Ankit Kumar and Jayant Yadav's turn to entertain, as they formed a union of 113 for the sixth wicket, their partnership coming at above four runs an over. While Jayant remained unbeaten on 55, North declared their second innings on 259 after Ankit was dismissed for 70. And soon after, their bowlers left the result a mere formality.