A masterly knock of 146 by Rohan Gavaskar helped East Zone take home fivepoints in their first outing in the Duleep Trophy this season

Staff Reporter14-Jan-2001A masterly knock of 146 by Rohan Gavaskar helped East Zone take home fivepoints in their first outing in the Duleep Trophy this season. On the lastday of the match between East and Central Zone at Green Park, Kanpur onSunday, East got past the Central Zone score and took the vital firstinnings lead.Resuming at 230/4 with another 192 runs required for the first inningslead, East got off to a bad start and were quickly reduced to 249/5, losingRajiv Kumar bowled by Sriwastava for 25. What followed was a dominatingsixth wicket partnership between Gavaskar and wicket keeper Deep Dasgupta.They put on 174 runs in 48.4 overs and took the East Zone score beyondCentral’s 421 before Murali Kartik had Dasgupta caught by Abhay Sharma for72 at 423. Dasgupta’s crucial innings lasted for 216 minutes as he faced140 balls of which he struck nine to the fence.Meanwhile, left handed Gavaskar was happy accumulating runs and making surethat East took the honours. Gavaskar struck the ball all around for 15boundaries and 2 sixes off 295 balls in his innings that lasted a littleover six and a half hours. Gavaskar was caught by substitute fielderDevendra Bundela off the bowling of Kulamani Parida with the East scorereading 433 in the 122nd over.East Zone batted on with Sukhbinder Singh making 29 off 66 balls (1 six, 4fours) and were all out for 484 in the 145th over as the match was calledoff as a draw. Kulamani Parida took the bowling honours for Central with44-13-126-3. Central took three points from the match and took their pointstally to eight from two matches.