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Cricket
By Our Special Correspondent
AGARTALA, JAN. 23. East Zone continued its winning run in the Prof. D.B. Deodhar Trophy limited-overs inter-zonal cricket tournament. East posted a thrilling one-wicket win over South with a ball to spare, for its third straight victory, here on Friday. East will meet Central Zone at Jamshedpur on January 27. A win would give East the title. Central, which lost to South in the first match, defeated North by 51 runs at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack to register its first victory. Central has two more engagements against East and West. For South and North, the second loss means the two sides are out of the title race. West Zone can still win the championship provided it wins its next two matches with bonus points. Central's position is also the same. At the end of three rounds, East leads the league table with 13 points. South is next with five, West and Central are third with four each and North last with minus 2. East almost made a mess of its chase of South's 240 for five in 50 overs. Despite being 122 for one in the 19th over, and in line for a bonus point, East began to flounder but found a saviour in left-handed Kiran Powar who took the team to the threshold of victory before the last pair was called upon to save the situation. The 10th wicket survived many anxious moments before hitting the winning runs off the penultimate ball. East put South in on a damp wicket and straight away wrested the advantage owing to some good bowling and poor shot selection by the South top-order. Sadagopan Ramesh was caught behind off Laxmi Ratan Shukla down the leg-side chasing a wide ball and Sridharan Sriram was caught behind off a rising ball from off-spinner Sourashish Lahiri. In between M.S.K. Prasad was bowled by a clever in-swinger from Shib Shankar Pal. It was Y. Venugopala Rao who steadied the innings with a tremendous innings of 104 not out, his maiden hundred in the Deodhar Trophy. Coming in at 51 for two, Rao applied himself on a difficult wicket, relying more on singles and later on opening up to hit six 4s in his 123-ball innings. He put on 110 for the fifth wicket with Ajay Kudua, who came in place of Arjun Yadav. East's reply began with a flourish. The in-form openers Nikhil Haldipur and M.S. Dhoni putting on 70 off 72 balls before Haldipur was run out. Skipper Devang Gandhi joined forces but lost Dhoni on 122 in the 20th over. South's left-arm spinner Sreekumar Nair snared five wickets — Dhoni (65, 60b, 11x4), Gandhi (21, 34b, 2x4), Deep Dasgupta (5, 6b), Laxmi Ratan Shukla (4, 10b) and R. Satish (8, 11b, 2x4) to reduce East to 167 for six by the 30th over. Amid the East ruins stood Kiran Powar guiding the team to 235 for nine before falling to a caught and bowled effort of S. Sriram. Powar's 65 (75b, 2x6) was an innings that took East so close yet it looked so far when he left to a very poor shot. But last man Shib Shankar Pal hung around for nine balls to help No. 10 Anirban Chatterjee hit the winning boundary.
South Zone: 240 in 50 overs (S. Ramesh 28, Y. Venugopala Rao 104 not out, A. Kudua 34) lost to East Zone 243 for nine in 49.5 overs (N. Haldipur 30, M.S. Dhoni Nair 65, K. Powar 65, Sreekumar Nair five for 29).
At Cuttack: Central Zone 250 in 50 overs (T.P. Singh 39, Gagan Khoda 76, J.P. Yadav 62) beat North Zone 199 in 43.3 overs (Akash Chopra 50, Mithun Manhas 35, Ajay Jadeja 44, Anoop Dave five for 33).
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