North to play first match against Central

Jamshedpur, Oct 26 (UNI) Star-studded North zone will open its account as a favourtie against Central zone in their four-day Duleep trophy tie at the Keenan stadium here tomorrow.

Both the teams have arrived here and undergone net practice this afternoon.

Central zone under the leadership of J P Yadav, who played for national side in ODIs, had a close brush against the East zone in Gwalior and managed to finish the match in a draw due to rains and bad light on the last day.

The team will have to improve its performance to clinch victory against the strong North zone.

Apart from Yadav, test discard Murali Karthik might give trouble to the North batsmen with his spin. Central batsmen, except middle order batsman Abbas Ali, who scored half centuries in both the innings against Bengal, failed against some fine bowling of the opposition and their top order would have to improve against the bowling of test discard Ashish Nehra and young pacer V R V Singh,who was the member of Indian squad in the last West Indies tour.

Veteran Delhite Mithun Manhas will lead the North zone and certainly enjoy upper hand agaisnt the opponent with batting as well as bowling departments. Apart from Manhas himself, star player and opener Gautam Gambhir and another test discard Akash Chopra are expected to give good start for their side.

Other young players of the North are expected to perform well at Keenan which traditionally helps the batsmen.

Both the teams would announce their final eleven tomorrow morning.

Following are the teams: Central Zone :J P Yadav (Capt), Murali Karthik (V. Capt), Amit Pagina, T P Singh, S K Shukla, Abbas Ali, Brajesh Tomar, Praveen Kumar, Anand Ranjan, Pankaj Singh, Sandip Singh, Tanmay Srivastava, Piyush Chawala, Naman Oza and K Parida.

North Zone: Mithun Manhas, Gautam Gambhir, Akash Chopra, Ravneet Ricky, Sachin Rana, Yashpal Singh, Mahesh Rawat, M Bisla, Ashish Nehera, V R V Singh, Gagandeep Singh, Joginder Sharma, Rajesh Sharma, Virat Kohli and Vishal Bhatia.

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