Dinesh Mongia cracks another double hundred

Dinesh Mongia hit his second double hundred in this year's Duleep Trophy championship as North Zone piled up 690 for eight before declaring on the second day of their match against Central Zone at the Feroze Shah Kotla grounds in New Delhi on Friday. At close, Central had replied with 81 for one off 13 overs.

Mongia had hit 201 in the opening round encounter against South Zone. On Friday, the 23-year-old Punjab batsman hit 208 and added 316 runs for the fifth wicket with his Punjab colleague Reetinder Singh Sodhi.

Resuming at the North Zone score of 391 for four, Mongia and Sodhi carried on from where they left off and did pretty much what they liked with the bowling. The stand was not broken till the score was 620 after an association that lasted 80 overs. Then Mongia was finally dismissed after batting 433 minutes. He faced 319 balls and hit 27 fours and two sixes. Sodhi did not last long after Mongia's departure. His 137 was compiled in 375 minutes. He faced 245 balls and hit 13 fours and three sixes. Harbhajan Singh then flogged the tired attack for a breezy 42 off 43 balls with four boundaries and two sixes. The Central Zone bowling made for sorry reading with four of the bowlers conceding over 100 runs. Indian left arm spinner Murali Kartik was the most expensive conceding 178 runs off 53 overs and finishing wicketless.

When Central Zone batted, they lost the wicket of Amit Pagnis early but the other opener Jai P Yadav and skipper Amay Khurasiya then showed that there was nothing in the bowling or the pitch and rattled up 65 runs for the unbroken second wicket off only 9.3 overs. While Yadav has hit 23 off 37 balls with four hits to the fence, the more aggressive Khurasiya is batting with 45 off just 28 balls. He has hit eight fours and a six.