Disciplined bowling performance by medium pacer Laxmipathy Balaji and leg spinner M Suresh helped South Zone to thrash North Zone by a huge margin of 411 on the fourth and final day of four-day Duleep Trophy semi-final played in Rajkot on Sunday.

South Zone scored a mammoth 548 runs in the first innings and then bundled out North Zone for 300 taking a huge lead of 248 runs but South Zone skipper S Badrinath did not ask North Zone to follow on and rather chose to bat again.

In their second essay, South Zone declared at their overnight score of 319 and set a massive winning target of 568 runs for the rivals and took just 42.3 overs to thrash North on the final day.

Only Shikhar Dhavan (61 runs, 100b, 9x4), Amit Mishra [Images] (46 runs, 74b, 6x4, 1x6) and skipper Akash Chopra (27 runs, 50b, 5x4) could reach double figures, while Virat Kohli [Images] and Rajat Bhatia did not bat because of injures.

For South Zone, Laxmipathy Balaji and M Suresh shared three wickets each giving away 20 and 48 runs respectively.

South will now play Duleep Trophy final against West Zone at Chennai.