Finally, at long last, a result. East Zone wins by five wickets. Dinda and Nechim have taken a bagful (12) of wickets across the match, but it must be argued, this is a very under-strength West Zone (no Rahane, no Rohit Sharma, no Irfan, no Yusuf, no Jadeja, no Patels, no Tendulkar, no Zaheer- not even Dhawal Kulkarni) and the East Zone side was, in the absence of Tiwary and Shukla, heavily loaded. Let's just hope the wickets didn't fall to serial poor strokes. West Zone, it seems, tried to play attacking cricket to wrest back the lead and force a score to win the game- which didn't quite work out. The lack of star players is disappointing, and it takes the sheen off what's supposed to be the premier FC event.
Something to think about- some of the top bowlers in the domestic scene- notably Vinay Kumar, Pankaj Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, Pragyan Ojha, Ashwin- do really well for their state teams, but struggle when playing for a zonal side. Yet, some of them revel in India A or Board XI duty.