Duleep Trophy: Dinda helps East Zone into finals

Vishakhapatnam: A ravishing bowling performance by Ashok Dinda helped holders East Zone advance to the finals of the Duleep Trophy here on Wednesday.

South chasing a target of 239 on the final day of the match ended 85-8 as East qualified for the summit clash by the virtue of their first innings lead.

Dinda was the wrecker in chief and accounted for the seven of those eight wickets.

Earlier in day, South after conceding a lead in the first innings entered the last day of the match with chances of winning the match.

Down 126-5, the overnight pair of Biplab Samantray and Basant Mohanty denied any early breakthrough to South and stitched a partnership of 68 for the seventh wicket.

Samantray scored 52 including six fours while Mohanty hit four boundaries for his 35. After the partnership was broken East could not hang on long and the ended their innings on 215.

It looked an achievable target, but Dinda was right on the money from the word go. He extracted swing and bounce from a pitch that offered nothing to seamers in the match. He kept taking wickets at will and one point it looked like South will not be able to cross 48, the lowest Duleep Trophy total. But K P Apanna and CM Gautam and ensured that are not bowled out.

Brief Scores: East Zone 267 and 215 (Behera 60, Kumar 3-10) drew with South Zone 244 and 85-8 (Appanna 24, Dinda 7-26)

By Indian Sports News Network