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Journalism of Courage
MOHALI, JANUARY 10: Oh, the long and dreary winter! Oh, the cold and cruel winter! Nayan Mongia may not have perhaps read H.W. Longfellow who wrote the above mentioned lines but he will surely agree with him. Certainly, after having reached Chandigarh during the peak of winter season!
“Its really freezing out here. I have been here many times before but never during the height of winterâ€, remarked Mongia, whose wicket-keeping gloves were serving a dual purpose.
Mongia’s teammates struggled hard to keep hands out of their trouser pockets. “Freezingâ€, “icyâ€, “bitterâ€, etc., each one of them had a word in store to describe the weather. But in the end, all the West Zone players simply ran out of words after arriving in the City on the coldest night of the season (2.2 degrees) and having a net-session on a foggy morning today.
It will be a battle of a different kind at the lush green ground of the Punjab Cricket Association’s Stadium in Mohali where North Zone takes on West Zone in a league match of the Duleep Trophy, here tomorrow.
The North Zone team, boosted by the joining of two medium pacers Ashish Nehra (left-arm) and Gagandeep Singh (right arm) who did not play against the South Zone at Vijayawada, last week, will be hoping to cash in the ‘home advantage’ and ‘familiar’ weather conditions against West Zone which still have a lot of work to do and prove that the team can perform well in the absence of stars like Sachin Tendulkar, Ajit Agarkar and Vinod Kambli.
While the ‘in form’ North Zone team, who took five points from their drawn match against South, will be looking for another run feast on the home-track, the West Zone team, on the other hand, will be hoping that their star bowler Zaheer Khan (who arrived only in afternoon) along with Iqbal Siddique and Santosh Saxena make best use of the early morning moisture and suitable conditions for fast bowling on a lively green-top PCA wicket.
Teams: North Zone: Vikram Rathour (captain), Pankaj Dharmani (wicket-keeper), Aakash Chopra, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Sarandeep Singh, Reetinder Singh Sodhi, Ashish Nehra, Gagandeep Singh, Surinder Singh.West Zone (from): Nayan Mongia (captain), Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Wasim Jaffer, Connor Williams, Jacob Martin, Abhijit Kale, Niraj Patel, Zaheer Khan, Iqbal Siddique, Santosh Saxena, Sairaj Bahatule, Ramesh Power, Valmik Buch, Prashant Noshi, Santanshu Kotak.
