Duleep Trophy: Central Zone crush East Zone by 170 runs, enter semifinals

Riding on an excellent eight-wicket haul by Saurabh Kumar, Central Zone advanced to the semifinals of the Duleep Trophy with a facile 170-run win over East Zone here on Saturday. Resuming from the overnight 69 for 6, East Zone never really offered any fight and were bowled out for 129 in their second innings.

In their semifinal match, Central will face West Zone at the Alur grounds from July 5. In the second semifinal, North Zone will take on South Zone at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. The presence of Riyan Parag was the lone hope for East to at least run Central close. But that was soon snuffed out when left-arm spinner Saurabh trapped the Assam youngster in front of the wicket.

Saurabh soon added the wickets of Akash Deep, Shahbaz Nadeem and Ishan Porel to his kitty to walk away with an impressive figure of 8 for 64. Saurabh grabbed 11 wickets in the match to complete a fine outing. The collapse was rather stunning as there was nothing really alarming in the pitch to justify such a collapse. In fact, East were bowled out for 122 in their first innings.