Pacers to the fore as Delhi rout HP

Virender Sehwag made a controlled 54 before Delhi’s pace attack decimated the Himachal Pradesh batting to take their team to a 102-run victory in the Ranji one-dayer played at the PCA stadium.

Virender Sehwag made a controlled 54 before Delhi’s pace attack decimated the Himachal Pradesh batting to take their team to a 102-run victory in the Ranji one-dayer played at the PCA stadium.

The margin of victory, however did not reflect the struggle Delhi went through after it was put in to bat. After Sehwag’s failure with the bat yesterday, Delhi decided to revert to the tried and tested opening pair of Gautam Gambhir and Akash Chopra.

But even as wickets tumbled at the other end,

the Delhi dasher played smartly, suppressing his natural batting style, avoiding the aerial route in his 66-ball essay laced with nine boundaries.

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Brief scores: Delhi 170 all out in 40.3 overs (Sehwag 54; Sarandeep Singh 3/23, Jitender Mehta 3/59) bt Himachal Pradesh 68 all out in 23.2 overs (Sandeep Sharma 20, Ashish Nehra 3/18, Amit Bhandari 3/23, Pradeep Sangwan 3/26).

Kaif scores 151 in big UP win

Central Zone scores: • Uttar Pradesh 365 (Mohd Kaif 151, Anshul Kapoor 87, Suresh Raina 50) bt Rajasthan 168 (Anshu Jain 95, Shalabh Srivastava 4/48, Praveen Kumar 3/32) • Madhya Pradesh 246 ( Shadab Khan 52 not out, Abbas Ali 50) bt Railways 174 (JP Yadav 54, Sunil Dholpure 5/44)

North Zone scores: • Punjab 269 (Karan Goel 111, Dinesh Mongia 71, Ravneet Ricky 50) beat J&K 185 (Hardeep Singh 35, Rajesh Sharma 4/25) • Haryana 294 (Sumit Sharma 87, Amit Mishra 45, Dhruve Singh 51 not out) beat Services 182 (Yashpal Singh 73, Amit Mishra 4/29).