At the end of another eventful day, East Zone were scenting victory intheir Duleep Trophy match against South Zone at the Maharaja BirBikram College Stadium in Agartala on Friday

Staff Reporter26-Jan-2001At the end of another eventful day, East Zone were scenting victory intheir Duleep Trophy match against South Zone at the Maharaja BirBikram College Stadium in Agartala on Friday. Eleven runs behind onthe first innings, South Zone were all out for 177 in their secondknock. Requiring 167 runs for victory, East Zone were 71 for two atstumps. With only 96 runs more required and eight wickets in hand,they must start the third day as favourites.Resuming at three for no loss, South Zone were again rocked byDebasish Mohanty who dismissed both openers Sridharan Sriram (14) andA Nandakishore (18) with only 42 runs on the board. However, SouthZone’s fortunes were, for a short while, in the safe hands of RahulDravid and VVS Laxman. The two India stars added 67 runs for the thirdwicket off 18 overs and at 109 for two, South Zone seemed poised for achallenging total. However Assam left arm spinner Sukhbinder Singh hadLaxman caught and bowled for 40 and there was precious littlesubstance in the South Zone batting thereafter. Laxman faced 66 ballsand hit seven fours.Mohanty came back to dismiss Vijay Bhardwaj (1) for his 13th wicket ofthe match. Sukhbinder then had VST Naidu leg before for eight. SunilJoshi became the third successive lbw victim when he was dismissed byMohanty. Aashish Kapoor and Javagal Srinath were dismissed offsuccessive deliveries from Sukhbinder and South Zone had slumped to138 for eight.Dravid was holding one end up and he now found an able partner in WDBalaji Rao with whom he added 35 runs for the ninth wicket off eightovers. However Sukhbinder brought the innings to a swift end when inone over he had the wickets of Dravid and Venkatesh Prasad. Dravid,who batted a shade over three hours for 66, faced 143 balls and hiteight of them to the ropes. But the chief honours were claimed bySukhbinder who finished with six for 57. Mohanty’s bag of four for 45gave him a match haul of 14 for 91.East Zone required only a modest target but were rocked by Indianpacemen Srinath and Prasad. While P Jai Chandra was bowled by Prasadfor three, RR Parida was bowled by Srinath for a duck. East Zone werein trouble at eight for two. But Indian opener Shiv Sundar Das andSanjay Raul weathered the storm with an unbroken third wicketpartnership of 63 runs off 29.3 overs. By close, Das was batting on 49compiled off 108 balls with seven fours. Raul was on 15.