Chennai: South Zone takes on West Zone in the all important quarterfinal of Duleep Trophy as both the teams will be looking to book their place in the semi-finals.

West Zone will be a bit in the back foot as they start their campaign with South Zone because of missing out on some very important names who are busy playing for the India 'A' team and also in the on going Champions League.

The names include the likes of Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara and Abhishek Nayar to name a few in the four-day match starting on Thursday.

While West Zone might be missing out on the services of the above players, veteran cricketer Wasim Jaffer who is also the captain of Wasim Jaffer seems unrattled and wants to concentrate on the job in hand.

Wasim Jaffer is also the highest run-scorer in Duleep Trophy by notching up 2534 runs from 29 matches and looks good to get a few more in the upcoming encounter.

South Zone on the other hand have won the Duleep Trophy eleven times and have won the title last in the year 2009 at the same venue beating West Zone.

South Zone have proven stars like Baba Aprajith and wicketkeeper-batsman CM Gautham of Karnataka and will be led by Vinay Kumar.

West Zone with the experienced Jaffer and potent spinners in Rakesh Dhruv, Kamlesh Makwana and medium pacer Jaydev Unadkat, have enough firepower to counter the South Zone batting.