West seek a winning start

HYDERABAD, January 18: After a disastrous outing last year when they lost all their four matches, North Zone began their campaign with a con...

HYDERABAD, January 18: After a disastrous outing last year when they lost all their four matches, North Zone began their campaign with a convincing win over Central in their first encounter last week. That win has brought some refreshing change in their attitude and now they take on a relatively new-look West in their second league match of the Deodhar Trophy at the Gymkhana ground, here, tomorrow.

The track for tomorrow’s One-dayer has a fair amount of grass which may help the new ball bowlers, especially the team fielding first.

“The wicket looks okay. I was not expecting a bald wicket. Anyway, the grass around the wicket would not make any difference,” said North skipper Vikram Rathore, who disclosed that they may retain the same eleven which played against Central Zone.

Story continues below this ad

West Zone skipper Sanjay Manjrekar showed no surprise, saying that it was a good track. “We want to start on a winning note to help us carry on in the league matches,” said Manjrekar.

West are without opener Wasim Jaffer and medium-pacer Abey Kuruvilla. The former was not considered while the latter has an injured finger. Teams (from): North Zone: Vikram Rathore (capt), Manav Mehra, Ajay Sharma, Ashu Dani, Rajeev Nayyar, Vijay Dahiya (wk), Mithun Manhas, Shakti Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Robin Singh, Nikhil Chopra, Vijay Sharma, Pankaj Thakur, Shafiq Khan and Navdeep Singh. Manager: Suresh Luthra.

West Zone: Sanjay Manjrekar (captain), Rajesh Sutar, Vinod Kambli, Jatin Paranjpe, Amol Muzumdar, Ajit Agarkar, Nilesh Kulkarni, Paras Mhambrey, Sanjay Kondhalkar (wk), Iqbal Siddique, Jacob Martin, Sitanshu Kotak and Rajesh Garsondia. Manager: Rakesh Parikh.

Umpires: O Krishna (Hyderabad) and S Ravi (Karnataka)