Vinay leads South fightback

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R. Vinay Kumar played a captain’s knock and then shared the bowling honours with Stuart Binny and Amit Verma as South Zone clawed their way back into their Duleep Trophy semifinal against East Stadium here on Tuesday.
Vinay rallied with the tail to hit a half-century even as South conceded the crucial first innings lead before the bowlers reduced East to 129 for 6 in their second essay on the third day. With a day’s play remaining, defending champions East lead by 152 with just four wickets in hand. South would do all it can to push for an outright win.
Earlier, Vinay scored an impressive 61 which inc­luded seven fours to take South’s total to 244, 23 short of East’s first innings total.
Beginning the day at 134 for 5, South lost C.M. Gautham early in the first session for his overnight score of 8. Vinay then built a 65-run partnership with Amit Verma (49) to pull the side out of trouble. For East, Iresh Saxena took 3 for 37.

SCOREBOARD
East Zone (1st innings): 267.
South Zone (1st innings): A. Mukund b Saxena 19, R. Uthappa c Gautam b Samantray 40, R. Prasanna lbw b Dinda 2, M. Pandey b Samantray 31, A. Verma c&b Quadri 49, S. Binny lbw b Samantray 0, CM Gautam c Gautam b Dinda 8, R. Vinay Kumar b Saxena 61, A. Mithun c&b Quadri 12, KP Appanna b Saxena 0, R. Aushik Srinivas (n.o) 6. Extras (b7, nb9): 16. Total (all out in 82.4 overs): 244.
FoW: 1-69, 2-69, 3-71, 4-115, 5-115, 6-137, 7-202, 8-220, 9-221.
Bowling: Dinda 19.5-2-85-2; Moha­nty-18-4-37-0; Samantray 21.1-8-41-3; Saxena 13.4-3-37-3; Quadri 10-0-37-2.
East Zone (2nd innings): M. Vardhan b Vinay 0, DS Jadhav lbw b Amit 21, N. Behera lbw b Binny 60, AP Majumdar st Gautam b Aushik 22, S. Tiwary c Pandey b Binny 0, Sam­antray (batting) 10, SP Gautam c Pandey b Mithun 4, B. Mohanty (batting 6. Extras (b1, lb3, nb 2): 6. Total (for six wickets in 52 overs) 129.
FoW: 1-0, 2-65, 3-98, 4-98, 5-110, 6-121.
Bowling: Vinay 4-2-8-1; Mithun 6-1-10-1; Binny 9-2-25-2; Appanna 11-2-28-0; Prasanna 1-0-4-0; Aushik 15-3-34-1; Amit 6-1-16-1.