Visakhapatnam, Feb 4: Day 3 of the Duleep Trophy final at Dr. YSR Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium came to a close with North Zone on 50/1 with nine wickets in hand.

North Zone came in to bat in the last session of day’s play. Pragayn Ojha got the first breakthrough for the bowling side, sending back Shikhar Dhawan on 19 runs.

Nitin Saini and Mandeep Singh were out in the middle at stumps on Day 3. With cracks appearing on the pitch, the spinners are likely play an important role for the remainder of the match.

Earlier, South Zone were all out for 477 runs post-Lunch with a first innings lead of 140 runs.

B Sumanth, who was batting on 21 at the end of the Day 2, went on to make 48 before being bowled by Joginder Sharma.

South Zone skipper S Badrinath (136 runs) was run-out at the non-striker’s end in an interesting fashion. Bowler Ishant Sharma, who got his hand to the ball, dropped a return catch off Amit Verma but ended up catching Badrinath well out of his crease. Earlier, Ishant had ripped Badrinath’s leg stump off a no-ball and was denied the wicket.

Tail-enders Abhimanyu Mithun and Pragyan Ojha made 26 and 21 runs respectively for the team, preceded by Amit Verma who scored 32 runs. Pragyan Ojha was the last South Zone batsman to get out, falling to Yashpal Singh.

Ishant Sharma eventually ended with two wickets to his name while Joginder Sharma and Sumit Narwal took three wickets each.

Brief score:

North Zone: 1st Innings 337 all out in 106.1 overs and 2nd Innings (N Saini 21*, Mandeep Singh 9*, PP Ojha 1/21)

South Zone:1st Innings 477 all out in 132.2 over (S Badrinath 136, B Sumanth 48, Joginder Sharma 3/66)

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

South Zone Playing XI: 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.