da spicy bet： North Zone batsmen started their Vijay Hazare Trophy final against holdersEast Zone in style by piling up 398 for seven by the end of the first dayat the RSI grounds in Bangalore on Thursday
da betway： Staff Reporter08-Feb-2001North Zone batsmen started their Vijay Hazare Trophy final against holdersEast Zone in style by piling up 398 for seven by the end of the first dayat the RSI grounds in Bangalore on Thursday. Centuries by Paras Dogra (110)and Gaurav Gupta (105*) were the highlights of the day.Put in to bat, North Zone were given a good start with openers VishwasBhalla (14) and Rahul Arora (39) putting on 36 runs off 8.5 overs. Bhallawas the first to be dismissed caught by SP Priyadarshan off S Sarkar. Hispartner Arora soon joined him in the pavilion as he offered a return catchto Avik Choudury in the 14th over. In the very next over Sarkar sent backHimanshu Mehta (2).This brought Paras Dogra and Deepak Soni (25) together and they steadiedthe ship with a 107-run fourth wicket stand in 29 overs. Dogra was thechief contributor in the partnership. Scoring his runs at will, Dograreached his fifty needing just 41 balls. The partnership was broken whenSoni was bowled by SK Ray. Then Gaurav Gupta joined Dogra and forged a77-run fifth wicket partnership. During the course of the stand, Dograreached his century, needing 114 balls in all. Dogra got bogged down alittle and by the time he was dismissed in the 61st over, he faced 177balls and hit 16 boundaries.The fall of Dogra brought Abhinav Bali (55) to the crease. Along withGupta, he further tormented the East attack for a 102-run sixth wicketstand. Gupta then lost one more partner that of Bhupinder Singh (8) even asthe score proceeded beyond 350. At the end of the day, Gupta remainedunbeaten ably supported by Abhishek Sharma (8). Arshad Iqbal was the mostsuccessful bowler for East with figures of three for 84.
