West Zone wins a cliff hanger

Asked to make 117 for a win against probably the best of zonal teams, on the hottest day of the Cricinfo Rani Jhansi tournament Central Zone could not hold the nerve and so lost to West Zone, giving the second one run win match of the day.

U Kalyani won the toss for West Zone in their last match of the CricInfo Rani Jhansi tournament at the SRMC grounds and decided to bat against Central Zone on a wicket that had a lot of cracks. West Zone women were not looking very enthusiastic after their close loss to Air India yesterday.

West Zone openers, Amrutha Shinde and Triptimani Rocue added 57 in the first 15 overs until the latter played a poor shot at Rahul Singh only to lose her off stump. Amrutha along with Kalyani manouvred the spin of Rahul Singh and Varsha Raphal sensibly and took the score to 77 when the skipper ran herself out for 17. The consistent Amrutha also followed her captain giving an easy catch to Bindeshwari at deep square leg after making a well played 40.

Once these two players were back in the pavilion, a slide was expected. But Aarti Vaidya, capitalising on a dropped chance by Varsha Raphal of Bindeshwari, kept one end tight and helped her team to cross the three figure mark. Aarti perished in the 47th over trying to step on the accelerator.

Off spinner Bindeshwari Goyal extracted good turn and bounce from the wicket and packed up the West Zone tail. She ended up with the excellent figures of 5 for 16. West Zone slumped to 116 all out in 47 overs from 116 for 6 at the start of the over. Bindeshwari took three wickets in that over and the other was a run out.

Central Zone started well with openers Bharti Verma and Seema Sinha adding 26 in 10 overs before Kalyani struck twice in successive overs to get rid of Seema and Arundhati Kirkire who has been in good form with the bat in this tournament. But Arundathi was unhappy with the decision and took a long and slow walk back to the dressing room.

When Chitra Bajpai and Bharti Verma were slowly steadying the Central Zone innings, Sangeetha Kamat was brought on to bowl and she did the trick for West Zone by uprooting Bharti's stumps. Preethi Dudhe joined Chitra and looked good until she was well caught by Sangeetha Kamat of her own bowling.

Ranjana Gupta gave Chitra good company and at this stage the match looked like Central's. But a misunderstanding between the two batswoman had Chitra walking back to the pavilion after a responsible knock of 21. Rahul Singh came in and hit the ball hard, though she could not send it to past the ropes due to the heavy outfield. Ranjana and Rahul fell off successive deliveries, sent down by different bowlers.

The tail enders batted with a sense of responsibility and took the score to 114 for 8 at the end of the 47th over. At this stage Kalyani called Aarti Vaidya to bowl her first over of the tournament and she did the job for her skipper by giving away a run and then dismissing Varsha Raphal with an ultra flighted delivery.

With the score 115 for 9, Central Zone needed two runs from two overs with the last pair on the crease. Nilima Waghmare was continuing her second spell and was bowling tight. Nilima was making amends for her poor first spell which cost 14 runs in just three overs. Trying to retain the strike for the next over to score the winning run, Bindeshwari called Varsha (running for Neetu Singh who had pulled a thigh muscle while bowling) for a single, pushing the ball to cover. Amrutha Shinde picked up and effected a direct hit at the striker's end to finish a clean sweep of the zonal teams by West Zone.

For nearly three quarters of the match umpire Vijayaraghavan was off the field due to sickness and he almost fainted due to the heat. A stand bye person officiated the match.