National T20: North cave in versus Central

MUMBAI: After taking 38 runs from the powerplay overs without losing a wicket, the starstudded North Zone still fell four runs short of the 168-run target against Central Zone in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 match at the Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday.

Leg spinner Karn Sharma removed Gautam Gambhir (20), Shikhar Dhawan (37) and skipper Harbhajan Singh (1) conceding only 17 runs in his four overs, and the asking rate for North climbed to nearly 16 an over.

Yuvraj Singh brought the team closer to the target with a 20-ball 33 (4x6).

Three of the sixes came off Central Zone pacer Aniket Choudhary’s final over which went for 21 runs. From 52 in 18 balls, Yuvraj had brought down the equation to 31 in 12 balls. He fell giving a simple catch to Karn and Manpreet Gony’s nine-ball 23 not out was not enough for North in the end.

“I bowled a lot slow on this match. Also I tried to bowl a lot of googlies as they had many left-handers. It’s always difficult to hit googlies for left-handed batsmen,” said Karn.

Central finished on 167/7 thanks to Ashish Nehra’s 3/26. Naman Ojha (48) and Mahesh Rawat (57no) lifted Central .

JAGGI GIVES EAST WIN

Jharkhand batsman Ishank Jaggi vented his frustration after being left out of the IPL player auctions by hammering a 51-ball 90 (11x4, 4x6) to lead East Zone to victory against South Zone.

Jaggi was not in the mix for the auctions despite a prolific domestic season, including over 800 runs in Ranji Trophy.

Put into bat, South made 178/6 in 20 overs with Mayank Agarwal top-scoring with (72, 36b) and R Vinay Kumar making 68.

In reply, East Zone reached 181/4 in 19.4 overs .