Gambhir powers North Zone to easy win

North Zone put in a good, strong bowling performance and then followed it up with a fluent batting performance to canter to victory by seven wickets against Central Zone. The stars of the day were Joginder Sharma, who bowled with intelligence and control, and then later Gautam Gambhir, who unleashed a volley of boundaries as North Zone chased down 196 with plenty of time to spare.

When Dinesh Mongia, who won the toss, chose to bowl, it didn't appear to be the brightest decision. Although there was a bit of live grass on the surface, the pitch was still very good for batting. But he made the decision keeping the dew factor in mind, and in the end it was one that paid off.

VRV Singh and Ashish Nehra got North off to the perfect start, picking off the two openers cheaply. VRV blasted out Faiz Fazal while Nehra had Monish Mishra trapped plumb in front. Mohammad Kaif, the Central Zone skipper, teamed up with Shreyas Khanolkar, and the two began the repair operation from 15 for 2.

Khanolkar was steady, and took no chances against either VRV or Nehra, but Kaif, clearly not at his best, struggled to get going. With the runs not coming through big shots, and the singles stifled as well, the pressure gradually built. And when Joginder came on to bowl first change, Kaif went after him, but failed to do more than get a thin edge to an attempted pull shot.

From then on, while Khanolkar sealed his end up, the wickets fell at regular intervals at the other end. Abbas Ali played on to his stumps, Piyush Chawla shouldered arms to an inswinger and was lbw, Jai P Yadav flashed one to Shikhar Dhawan in the slips - all off the bowling of Joginder. At 81 for 6 Central Zone were staring at being skittled out for a humiliatingly low score, but were saved the blushes by some spirited lower-order batting.

Rohit Jhalani (20), Murali Kartik (22) and Pankaj Singh (28) all contributed, but the only meaningful score of the innings was 57 from Khanolkar, and this meant that Central Zone could muster just 195.

When North Zone began the pursuit of 196, they gave Central Zone hint of a chance as two wickets fell for 53. But Central Zone could not take the risks they needed to, or set attacking enough fields, given they did not have the runs on the board. With this being the case, Dhawan and Gambhir settled into an easy groove and began picking off the bowlers.

Both Gambhir and Dhawan look to play their shots, and today was no exception. There were pleasing punches back down the ground, some flashy drives through the off side and occasionally the pick-up shot over the leg side. Their partnership stretched to 140 before Dhawan was acrobatically caught by RP Singh on the fine-leg fence after he had top-edged a pull shot. By then Dhawan had scored 51 and only three runs were needed for victory. Gambhir obliged, spanking his 13th boundary, to go with one six, and was unbeaten on a 98-ball 95 as North reached the target.