Saurabh Tiwary (84, 162b, 10x4,1x6) along with Basant Mohanty (51, 102b, 3x4, 2x6) rescued East Zone with an unbeaten 121-run stand in the Duleep Trophy semifinal against South Zone at the ACA-VDCA stadium here on Sunday.
East was down in the dumps at 66 for six when Mohanty joined Tiwary. The two then took the team to 187 for six before bad light stopped play.
South put East in on a pitch full of moisture after the match had commenced 45 minutes late due to the wet patches at the bowler’s run-up. East was in all sorts of trouble against the medium-pacers led by captain R. Vinay Kumar who simply kept their line and length.
At lunch East was 33 for four when Tiwary came to the crease. He played with a lot of caution while two more wickets fell at the other end with only 66 runs on board.
Tiwary was patience personified and waited for the loose balls even as the South bowlers found it hard to create the breakthrough. The first 50 runs of the Tiwary-Mohanty stand came off 90 balls and the next five overs saw the score moving at a fast pace. The second 50 came off just 54 balls.
Tiwary clouted left-arm spinner Appanna, who otherwise was impressive, into the stand behind long on and smashed two fours off medium-pacer Mithun just before tea.
The pair would have been separated had Pandey held on to a running catch at long-off when Mohanty lofted Mukund just before play was called off.
In the morning Vinay Kumar and Manish Pandey picked up two wickets and Stuart Binny bowled an excellent first spell picking up two in an over.
The scores:
East Zone — 1st innings: Manish Vardhan c Manish Pandey b Mithun 5, Dhiraj S. Jadhav c Amit Verma b Vinay Kumar 1, Nataraj Behera c Vinay Kumar b Binny 11, Anustup Majumdar c Gautam b Binny 4, Saurabh Tiwary (batting) 84, Biplab Samantray c Gautam b Mithun 6, S.P. Gautam c Gautam b Appanna 11, Basant Mohanty (batting) 51; Extras (b-8, lb-5, w-1): 14. Total (for six wkts. in 70 overs): 187.
Fall of wickets: 1-5, 2-15, 3-21, 4-21, 5-38, 6-66.
South Zone bowling: R. Vinay Kumar 14-3-29-1, A. Mithun 17-3-43-2, Stuart Binny 13-3-40-2, R. Prasanna 2-2-0-0, K.P. Appanna 13-4-30-1, Aushik Srinivas 6-0-16-0, Amit Verma 2-0-8-0, Abhinav Mukund 3-0-8-0.
