Visakhapatnam, Feb 2: North Zone were 266/7 at the end of the Day 1 of the Duleep Trophy final which began today at the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam.

South Zone, playing in their third consecutive Duleep Trophy final, got some early breakthroughs to leave North Zone reeling at 2/9 in the 10th over.

Himachal’s Paras Dogra was North Zone’s man-of-the-hour, making an unbeaten 147 runs. He helped save the day with useful contributions from Yashpal Singh and Uday Kaul.

Earlier, after winning the toss, North Zone elected to bat first. Nitin Saini was the first to be sent back by Pragyan Ojha as he looked to drive one but instead edged it to the keeper who fumbled before taking the catch. The next to go was Shikhar Dhawan as he pulled one delivery from Abhimanyu Mithun straight into the hands of Abhinav Mukund at mid-wicket.

North Zone’s semi-final hero, Mithun Manhas, fell after adding just seven runs to the tally. He was soon followed by Mandeep Singh who fell to S Aravind, caught at point after hitting the bowler for a four on the first ball of the same over.

Day 2 will begin with North Zone’s Paras Dogra and Joginder Sharma at the crease.

Brief score

North Zone: 1st Innings 266/7 in 90 overs (P Dogra 147*, Joginder Sharma 4*, Vinay Kumar 2/28, S Aravind 2/40)

South Zone: A Mukund, RV Uthappa, MK Pandey, S Badrinath ( c ), Amit Verma, B Sumanth, CM Gautam (wk), R Vinay Kumar, A Mithun, PP Ojha, S Aravind

North Zone: N Saini, S Dhawan, Mandeep, M Manhas, P Dogra, I Sharma, S Narwal, Yashpal Singh, A Mishra ( c ), Joginder Sharma, U Kaul (wk)