Tendulkar's return to contest may sustain the spirit

By G. Viswanath

PUNE, JAN. 31. There will be no climax to this year's inter-zonal championship. The title and prize has already been won by the team which turned out to be very formidable and performed efficiently in the first four weeks of the championship. A bunch of players representing North Zone took on the might of the other four zonal teams, showed utmost intensity and commitment to win the Duleep Trophy leaving no scope for any of the teams to challenge their position in the first four days of February when the last round of the inter- zonal competition will be gone through.

But even in this somewhat odd situation, wherein the winner has been spotted and the probables have been picked for the series against Australia, it appears the spirit of a contest will be sustained with gusto on Swargate Road's Nehru Stadium, thanks to Sachin Tendulkar's return to Duleep Trophy after eight seasons and his first visit to the venue where he will play his first, first class match. This is the batting maestro's 14th season in first class cricket in India and as he himself, matter of fact, revealed on Wednesday, ` This will be my maiden first class game here'.

In the three and a half hours the West Zone players spent at the stadium, only Tendulkar batted in the nets for close to three quarters of an hour. His school chum Vinod Kambli and Nayan Mongia (may open the West innings with Wasim Jaffer) had a knock near the barbed fencing. The bowler's run up was damp because of heavy dew (and perhaps excessive watering in that area on Tuesday) and hence his decision not to go through with the full batting and bowling session.

But in the 45 minutes he batted, he might have literally conveyed to his rival captain -- Shiv Sundar Das -- the bowling attack he will pick for the match. Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Iqbal Siddiqui, Sairaj Bahutule and Ramesh Powar bowled at him. The match against East will be Tendulkar's second first class game after the series against Zimbabwe; he played the Ranji Trophy match against Baroda in the third week of December.

``I am pretty serious about the match. This will be my first first class game here,'' he said. The first thing he did after reaching the city on Tuesday was enquire about the pitch. The fact that he specifically asked for Zaheer Khan ( he replaced Lalit Patel) to be picked for the match meant that he was keen on fielding three pace bowlers. At short notice the Club of Maharashtra groundstaff have managed to prepare a surface that has not got full approval from Tendulkar.

The hand roller (heavy) which helps to keep the grass `alive' was used. There is plenty of grass on the pitch, but Tendulkar said he will need to look at it on Thursday morning before he writes down his eleven. Immediately after batting he went up to the pitch, knocked his bat by the side of it to ascertain the hardness of the pitch, spoke to the groundstaff, Maharashtra opener Surendhra Bhave and then sent out Hrishikesh Kanitkar from the dressing room to have a look at the pitch. So much so for a match, the result of which will not make his team a champion side; eight points, however, will make West, runner-up.

While Tendulkar appeared all keyed up for the match -- he made leg spinner Bahutule and offspinner Powar bowl for 45 minutes to him -- East Zone, minus, Sourav Ganguly, had a good work out with almost every batsman getting a knock. Manager Pronob Roy said: ``I was given this team, I don't know why Ganguly is not in the team.'' The news on the grapevine is that since he played two matches for his club, but stayed away from the matches against Central, North and South, the selectors did not consider (read dropped) him for the match against West ! ``I don't know if he has taken the permission from Mr. Muthiah,'' said Mr. Jaywant Lele from Baroda.

East is likely to make a couple of changes from the eleven which beat South. ``There is grass on the pitch. We will wait till tomorrow,'' said Roy. Roy talked highly about wicketkeeper Deep Das Gupta, who it is believed was first picked in the India `B' team for the Challenger Series, but was eventually dropped by the selectors in their meeting in Mumbai on Monday. They opted for Punjab's Vikram Rathour as a batsman- wicketkeeper.

``Please send him a new pair of inners and wicketkeeper's gloves,'' told a former cricketer to another here on Tuesday night at dinner. Not at all in jest.

The teams:

East Zone (from): Shiv Sundar Das (Captain), P.Jaychandra, Rashmi Ranjan Parida, Sanjay Raul, Rohan Gavaskar, Zakaria Juffri, Sukhwinder Singh, Utpal Chatterjee, Debasish Mohanty, Javed Zaman, Deep Das Gupta (wk), Mridul Gupta, Ganesh Kumar, Mihir Diwakar, M. S. Dhoni

West Zone (from): Sachin Tendulkar (Captain), Nayan Mongia, Wasim Jaffer, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Jacob Martin, Vinod Kambli, Sairaj Bahutule, Ramesh Powar, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Iqbal Siddiqui, Connor Williams, Abhijit Kale, Niraj Patel, Prashant Joshi

Umpires: Messrs: Des Raj & P. Bhanu Prakash.

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