Green tops form bone of contention

About the North-East wicket, on which the only low-scoring Deodhar match has been played so far, Saba Karim said greentops should not be sprung upon teams so abruptly at this level. “If they want to give greentops, they should first give greentops for practice also,” said the former India wicketkeeper, who got an 89-ball century against Central at Vadodara.

South captain S Sharath disagreed with Karim. He said those are the kind of wickets on which cricket should be played, because a batsman needed skill and technique to play.

“On the kind of track we got at Rajkot,” said Sharath, “you cannot judge anybody. If 317 in 50 overs is not enough to win, there has to be something wrong. There was absolutely nothing for the bowlers and even a batsman (who has scored a century) cannot tell whether he is in good form. There is no point in playing cricket on such wickets.”

But from all appearances, Motera’s pitch looks like a cross between Vadodara’s greentop and Rajkot’s dead track, and the team which plays better cricket on the day should come out on top.

Teams
East Zone: Utpal Chatterjee (captain), Javed Zaman, Saba Karim (wicketkeeper), SS Das, Nikhil Haldipur, P Jaichandra, Rohan Gavaskar, Sanjay Raul, RR Paridha, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Rajiv Kumar, Aditya Shukla, Nikhilesh Ranjan, Zafar Zacharia Zulfi. Manager:Naresh Oza.
South Zone: S Sharath (captain), Nanda Kishore, J Arun Kumar, Tilak Nanda, Hemang Badani, S Sriram, Reuben Paul (wk), Ashish Kapoor, S Mahesh, Sreekumar Nair, T Kumaran, N Madhukar, NP Singh. Manager:Chandrashekhar.

North fancied
PUNE: With two victories, the well-knit North Zone are fancied to notch up their third when they take on Central in the Mahendra More benefit Deodhar Trophy tie at the Nehru Stadium.

Their rivals and defending champions Central Zone are trying not to leave anything to chance after their defeat against East Zone in a tall-scoring match in Baroda, reports Joe Williams.

“They are a better side but we have good all-rounders who can turn the table on this unpredictable wicket,” said Central manager JS Dave.

With Ajay Jadeja in their rank, North scored wins against West and East in the two earlier rounds. Although Jadeja is still to come, skipper Vikram Rathour and manager Suresh Luthra are sure he would be there for the match. “He is out to see his mother as she had taken ill in Delhi and he should be back this evening,” assured their manager.

Teams
North Zone: Vikram Rathour (captain), Ashu Dani, Pankaj Dharmani, Ajay Jadeja, Virendra Shewag, Rajiv Nayyar, Dinesh Mongia, Vijay Dahiya (WK), Amit Bhandari, Robin Singh (Jr), Ashish Nehra, Rahul Sanghvi, Sarandeep Singh, Jasbir Singh, Surender Singh, Mithun Manhas. Manager:Suresh Luthra.
Central Zone:Gyanendra Pandey (capt), Gagan Khoda, Sanjay Bangar, Manoj Mudgal (WK), Davinder Bundela, Harvinder Sodhi, J P Yadav, Amey Khurasia, Ashish Zaidi, Jyoti Yadav, P Krishnakumar, Pritam Gandhe, Murli Kartik, Raja Ali, Abbas Ali, Aashoo Jasin. Manager: J S Dave
Umpires:A K Tarapore and B Ravi (both Karnataka). Match Referee:Neel Kamal.