Bowlers make hay in batting paradise

But at the end of day’s play, West Zone looked completely lost at 61-5 and had their last pair of specialist batsmen, as their top-order batsmen showed lack of application and buckled under pressure, after some fine display of line and length bowling by Ganguly.

East batsmen were no different as they nullified the toss advantage by losing early wickets and never looked like getting a sizable total.

A few listless shots was all that needed for the West bowlers, especially Munaf Patel, who in a fiery spell helped knock out the East batters.

Just when Rohan Gavaskar and Arindam Das — in a 68-run partnership — looked like pulling East out of trouble, Munaf Patel rattled Gavaskar with his pace and finally got him one to play on.

An experienced batting line-up of the West couldn’t drive home the advantage.

The master stroke came from the former India captain, as he brought himself on to bowl in the seventh over. Many would have questioned his move. But on seeing the West opening pair struggling to get runs, he piled pressure on the batsmen with some displined bowling to claim three crucial wickets. No wonder, it brought a smile back on to his face, after his batting debacle.

At the end of the day, it left West Zone’s coach Balwinder Singh Sandhu fuming. He will probably be praying that local lads Parthiv and Niraj to show better sense on a batting beauty to pull them put of trouble.

Brief scores: East Zone: 150 (Arindam Das 56, Deep Dasgupta 24, Rohan Gavaskar 29, Zaheer 2-35, Rakesh Patel 2-22, Munaf Patel 3-41, Bahutule 3-27) vs West Zone: 61-5 (Ganguly 3-20)