Easy wins for East and West Zones

Hamilton Masakadza's fighting, unbeaten 103 could not prevent East from crushing the Zimbabwe President's XI by an innings and 17 runs inside three days at Mumbai. Masakadza, the Zimbabwean captain, was the only player to display aggression and courage to take on East's bowlers, and it was a sad commentary on the Zimbabweans' batting that the next highest score was 23 from Graeme Cremer at No.10.

Resuming the day at 20 for 0, the Zimbabweans soon found themselves reeling at 65 for 5 as 16-year old Shahbaz Nadeem, the left-arm spinner, struck to send back Neil Ferreira, Dion Ebrahim, Brendon Taylor and Charles Coventy in a tight spell. Nadeem (4 for 67) was ably supported by the choking off-spin of Saurasish Lahiri (4 for 34), who ripped through the lower order. It was the second time in the match that the Zimbabweans had collapsed after slow but steady starts.

West Zone 220 (Jaffer 58) and 140 for 3 (Jadhav 57*) beat Central Zone 206 (Kaif 56, Zaheer 6-54) and 150 (Zaheer 4-70) by 7 wickets

Dheeraj Jhadav (57*) and Jacob Martin (36*) took West to a comfortable seven-wicket victory against Central at Aurangabad, after Zaheer Khan's match haul of 10 for 124 had demolished the opposition twice in two days. West began the day at 2 for 0, chasing 137, but proceeded to lose three wickets as Harvinder Singh and Abbas Ali kept up the pressure. Jhadav however, kept his cool amidst the proceedings and made amends for his first innings failure to take West home.

Central had done well on day two to restricting West to a 14-run lead, thanks to Sanjay Bangar (5 for 37), but any hope of setting a substantial target were crushed by Zaheer (4 for 70) and Munaf Patel (3 for 17).