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Duleep Trophy 2014: Central Zone lead by 81 runs as North Zone bowled out for 457

Gautam Gambhir was the highest scorer of the innings with 167 runs.

Gautam Gambhir impressed with his knock of 167 © PTI
Gautam Gambhir impressed with his knock of 167 © PTI (File photo)

By Ayush Gupta 

Oct 24, 2014

North Zone was bowled out for 457 runs by Central Zone in their first innings of the Duleep Trophy semi-finals on the third day of play at Mohali. Gautam Gambhir was the highest scorer of the innings with 167 runs.

North Zone started the day with an ease and brilliance with eight wickets in hand. Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh were the batsmen on crease. Yuvraj fell short of his half-century by two runs, as he was dismissed on 48. However, the team steered to 334 after Yuvraj’s dismissal, thanks to Gautam Gambhir who got out after scoring an impressive 178. Mandeep too followed him back to the pavilion after just 20 more runs were added to the total at 354. He too played a good knock of 74.

However, after the dismissal of Mandeep, the remaining tail-end batsmen couldn’t contribute much as the team could manage only 103 runs and ended up getting bowled out for 457, thus handing Central Zone a lead of 81 runs.

After the North Zone innings got over, there was still sufficient time left for Central Zone to resume their second innings, but all of a sudden, there was an issue regarding sufficient amount of light to continue the play. With half-an-hour still remaining, the umpires decided that the light was insufficient to continue the play and thus calling it stumps for the third day. This means, Central Zone would have to begin their second innings on the fourth day. However, the play is expected to begin half-an-hour early in order to level things up with the loss of play on the third day.

Brief scores:

Central Zone 538 (Naman Ojha 217, Jalaj Saxena 110; Rishi Dhawan 3 for 123, Yuzvendra Chahal 3 for 150) lead North Zone 457 (Gautam Gambhir 167, Mandeep Singh 74; Kuldeep Yadav 3 for 94) by 81 runs

(Ayush Gupta is a reporter at CricketCountry. A passionate supporter of Manchester United, he idolises Roger Federer)

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