Left-arm spinner Tushar Saha grabbed four wickets to put East Zone in command on the second day of the four-day Duleep Trophy cricket match against South Zone at the Wankhede stadium here on Monday.

Replying to East Zone’s first innings score of 313, the South Zone batsmen put up an inept display again and were bowled out for 204, conceding the important first innings lead of 109 runs to East Zone.

South Zone, who had lost to North in the first league match, need to win to stay alive in the competition which now looks very distant possibility given the state of the match.

In command
At close of the play on the second day, East had made five runs for no loss of wickets in one over of play with Shib Sundar Das on four and Arindam Das on zero holding fort.

East are now ahead 114 runs and well and truky in hte driver’s seat.

Earlier, in the morning, resuming from 265 for seven, the East Zone tailenders added a further valuable 48 runs in 66 minutes before being bowled out for 313.

Haldar Das bwas unlucky to miss his century, falling for a well-made 93. South’s Aiyappa had him caught by Vinay.
For South Zone, NC Aiyappa took five wickets for 84.

South Zone started their first innings on a disastrous note when Ranadeb Bose struck in his first over, the second of the innings, getting Swapnil Asnodkar, who edged to the slip where Arindam Das took a good catch to leave South Zone at four for one wicket.

D Ravi Teja and Murali Vijay then steadied the innings, taking the score to 26 when Debashis Mohanty struck, getting the former out with a beautiful outswinger which took the outside edge through to the wicketkeeper Haldar Das. Ravi Teja made a mere 13 runs.