By ICF Staff
October 20 2005

India Test captain Sourav Ganguly, heading up a weak East Zone team against powerful North Zone, returns to cricket from injury with an impressive performance as captain, bowler and batsman. Rajkot: A surprisingly seamer-friendly greentop influenced Sourav Ganguly's decision to send in the power-packed North after winning the toss.

His decision paid off as fiery spells from East fast bowlers Ranadeb Bose and Shib Paul ripped through the opposition batsmen to bowl them out for a dismal 178 on the first day of the 4-day Duleep Trophy match.

North captain Dinesh Mongia, himself out for 4 caught off Paul, was looking at a much lower total after 8 wickets had fallen for 129. However, fast bowler VRV Singh came to their rescue with bat, top-scoring with a quickfire 46 that included two huge sixes and six fours before Ganguly took the ball himself to end the impressive cameo.

The only other batsman of note for North was Pankaj Dharmani, who scored 35 with six hits to the boundary. Bose's 4 wickets and Paul's 3, in addition to Ganguly's 2 off a relatively heavy workload of 13 overs for the captain, had North in shambles.

However, Ganguly was back on the field with bat soon afterwards as they hit back with four quick wickets to leave East at 77/4 by the end of the day, with pacemen Amit Bhandari and Gagandeep Singh sharing the spoils.

Openers SS Das and Arindam Das were back in the pavilion quickly courtesy Gagandeep, while Bhandari snatched the wickets of Saravanan and Rohan Gavaskar shortly thereafter. 20-year old tearaway bowler Vikram Singh, believed to be the fastest in India, was played carefully and remained wicketless off 6 overs.

Ganguly denied any further success to the North Zone quickies, holding fort with four boundaries in his 19 off 28 before stumps were called.

Vadodara: Test batsman VVS Laxman, captaining South Zone, saw his side bundled out for 219 on the opening day of their tie against West Zone on a bowler-friendly pitch.

Opener Swapnil Asnodkar was dismissed for duck in Zaheer Khan's second over, and Laxman himself was bowled for 7 off 28 balls when his leg stump was uprooted by a Munaf Patel delivery to send his side crashing to 54/3.

Spinners Ramesh Powar and captain Sairaj Bahutule took over after that, running through the South batting lineup with 7 wickets between them.

Opener Robin Uthappa batted well enough for his 30, including a huge six off Powar, before his innings was cut short by a smart direct hit from Dheeraj Jadhav at midwicket after a misunderstanding with Sriram.

Sriram, with a gritty 43(167) and Badani with 42 were the only batsmen to deliver for South, while wicketkeeper Karthik chipped in with a useful 34-run cameo.

However, South struck back as Test seamer Balaji stunned West with 2 wickets off as many overs in the last half-hour of the day, leaving them gasping at 4/2. Opener Dheeraj Jadhav was runless off 18 balls, but hung in there to bat another day.