Central Zone batsmen led by Robin Bist were guilty of poor shot selection as they finished at 237 for seven against South Zone on day one of their Duleep Trophy final here today.
Bist wasted a chance of scoring a ton as he got out for 79 off 153 balls in an innings that lasted three and half hours and had 12 sweetly timed boundaries with a six. For South, Baba Aparajith with 2/26 had best figures while R Vinay Kumar, HS Sharath, Shreyash Gopal, Pragyan Ojha and Hanuma Vihari all got a wicket apiece.
Central got partnerships of 68, 65, 52 but most of their batsmen got out after getting set. They got a couple of bad decisions with both Anil Chaudhary and K Srinath getting it wrong on one occasion each.
Despite a liberal coating of green, the Kotla wicket displayed its typical slow nature with the batsman having little difficulty in negotiating the pace trio of R Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun and HS Sharath.
Such was the slow nature of the pitch that Vinay deployed seven bowlers including four spinners in the first session itself.
While last match's centurion Jalaj Saxena (2) was given dubiously caught behind off Vinay's bowling, Bist in company of Vidarbha opener Faiz Fazal (49) negotiated the South bowlers with ease.
With no real demons in the pitch, batting became easy as the effort balls like bouncers from medium pacers were imperiously pulled.
Bist, in particular, was at his delightful best against the spinners as he used his feet well.
The diminutive right-hander lofted Pragyan Ojha for a lovely six over extra cover. While he found the gaps with ease against spinners, he rocked back to pull a Sharath short ball in-front of square. The shot off the day was a late cut by Bist off leg-spinner Shreyash Gopal.
Fazal-Bist duo added 65 runs for the second wicket before Baba Aparajith struck twin blows in the post-lunch session.
Southpaw Fazal, after doing all the hardwork, threw it away trying to cut Aparajith and offering a simple catch to Hanuma Vihari at point.
