Dinesh Mongia to lead North Zone

Dinesh Mongia, the left-handed batsman from Punjab, will lead North Zone in the inter-zonal Duleep Trophy tournament which start on October 20. The zonal selection committee, which met at the PCA Stadium in Mohali on Friday, also included Gautam Gambhir, the Indian opening batsman in Tests, and bowlers Joginder Sharma and Amit Bhandari in the squad.

North Zone will be depleted by the absence of some of their top stars like Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh, who will be doing national duty against Sri Lanka in a series of seven one-day matches starting on October 25.

North Zone will play its first match against East Zone at Rajkot from October 20 to 23.

North Zone squad
Dinesh Mongia (capt), Gautam Gambhir, Ravneet Ricky, Shikhar Dhawan, Yashpal Singh, Sangram Singh, Pankaj Dharmani (wk), MS Bisla, Gagandeep Singh, Amit Bhandari, Joginder Sharma, VRV Singh, Amit Mishra, Sarandeep Singh, Vishal Bhatia.

Standbys Sunny Singh, Abid Nabi, Vikram Malick, Dhruv Mahajan, Ajay Ratra (wk), R S Sodhi, Arun Kumar Sharma.