Underdogs Central against South heavyweights

After contrasting performances in the semi-finals, Central Zone's batting and South Zone's bowling will vie in the Duleep Trophy final at Feroz Shah Kotla from Wednesday. Central's batsmen had amassed 850 runs against North Zone in Mohali, while South's bowlers had routed East Zone for 84 and 62 on a lively Lahli pitch. It is the last first-class match in India before the Australia tour and hence the last opportunity for fringe players to make a case for inclusion in the Test squad.

One of the front-runners is the in-form Naman Ojha. Before his 217 and 40 against North, he had three consecutive centuries, including a double-hundred, and all of them in Australia. While Ojha's runs have come in the middle order, India's hunt for openers is still on. KL Rahul is likely to get another chance for South since his Karnataka team-mates Manish Pandey and Karun Nair have left for the warm-up one-day game against Sri Lanka in Mumbai on Thursday. The available opening slots will also give hopes to Abhinav Mukund, who last played a Test in 2011.

South will also be without Stuart Binny, who took seven wickets against East Zone, and Sanju Samson, who was not in the semi-final XI. Both of them will join Pandey and Nair in Mumbai. The replacements are Tamil Nadu's batsman R Prasanna and offspinner Malolan Rangarajan, Kerala batsman VA Jagadeesh and Hyderabad medium-pacer Ravi Kiran.

South coach Hemang Badani was asked if the squad looked depleted in the absence of some prominent names. "I don't think so because if some guys are replacing them, it means that they are good enough to play at this level," Badani said.

Central will be dented only in the spin department, losing out on Kuldeep Yadav and Karn Sharma, to be replaced by Uttar Pradesh left-arm spinner Ali Murtaza and Vidarbha offspinner Akshay Wakhare. They will be led by Piyush Chawla again.

The Kotla pitch, which shows variable bounce and turn later on, is said to have a green cover but South captain Vinay Kumar was not sure if that would stay till Wednesday morning. "I don't know whether they will shave off some grass tomorrow before the start of the match," Vinay said. "Looks a good grassy wicket but I can only assess it once the match starts."

Compared to South Zone's 13 titles, including the shared trophy with North last year, Central are underdogs with five trophies to their name.