Valsad, Jan 28: East Zone skipper Nartaj Behera scored an unbeaten 102 on Day 2 of the Duleep Trophy quarterfinal against West Zone at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium in Valsad. East Zone ended the day at 183 for four, trailing by 131 runs. Shreevats Goswami (1) is the other overnight batsman along with Behera.

Behera, who came in to bat one down, steadied the East innings as wickets fell all around him. Besides opener Dheeraj Jadhav (38) and Bilap Samantray (37), the skipper lacked support from his batsmen. Although the runs didn’t come as fluently as the East batsmen would have liked, Behera did manage to pierce the field 13 times for boundaries. Ishwar Chaudhary, Samad Fallah, Sandip Maniar, Akshay Darekar took a wicket each for West.

Earlier in the day, hosts West Zone lost their remaining three wickets in a jiffy, ending their innings at 314 after 91.1 overs; Ashok Dinda cleaned up the tail to register innings figures of four for 85. Abu Nechim Ahmed scalped three of West’s batsmen, giving away 61runs.