Mumbai starts favourites

Hyderabad, Sep 13 (UNI) Led by Test opener Wasim Jaffer, Mumbai starts favourites, while hosts Hyderabad is aiming to move ahead in the semi-finals of All India Moin-Ud-Dowlah Gold Cup Cricket tournament beginning tomorrow.

Wasim Jaffer, leading from the front, is in good nick having scored 35 against Bengal in pre-quarter finals and 40 and 74 against Railways in the quarter-finals.

Besides Sahil Kukreja, Bhavin Thakkar and Prashanth Naik were among runs. Their bowlers Rajesh Varma (15/168) and A Salvi (4/95) are leading bowlers of this tournament. But Chemplast is not that easy to overcome.

Having good top class batsmen Badani, Avinash and Satish, who scored 122 runs so far, and usefull run getters M Vijay, Minhas and allrounder Ramkumar in their ranks, Chemplast can hope for good score. Their bowlers Parida, L Balaji, Satish and Yohanan, are among wickets and pose threat to Mumbai.

Hyderabad, riding on Tirumalasetty Suman's one century and one half century, Laxman's half century and good bowling department led by Kaushik Reddy, who is among wickets and supported by N P Singh and I S Reddy, can create troubles to their opponents.

India Cements on the other hand has put up good performance so far with century maker S Sarath, Harish, Madan Gopal, Prasanna and allrounder Suresh in the batting department and Sreekumar Nair, Amarnath and Suresh can withstand Hyderabad's challenge.

Semifinals schedule At Rajiv Gandhi stadium, Uppal : Hyderbad Vs India Cements. At Gymkhana grounds, Secunderabad: Mumbai Vs Chemplast.

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