West Zone sans stars like batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar and left arm seamers Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan take on East Zone, without India skipper Sourav Ganguly, in the Deodhar Trophy inter-zonal limited overs cricket match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday.
While Tendulkar and Pathan are recovering from tennis elbow and side strain respectively, Ganguly and Zaheer Khan have opted out for personal reasons.
However, the West Zone team led by Ajit Agarkar has a slight edge over East skippered by former India opener Devang Gandhi.
Agarkar would be looking up to his Mumbai teammates Vinayak Mane and Amol Muzumdar, Baroda's Satyajit Parab, Maharashtra's Dhiraj Jadhav and Gujarat's Akash Christian and Test discard Parthiv Patel to put up a good total on bowler friendly Wankhede wicket.
With former Indian spinners Sairaj Bahutule and Ramesh Powar sidelined due to injury, former Mumbai left arm spinner Rajesh Pawar, who now represents Baroda, is sure to get a look in along with Niraj Patel of Gujarat.
The new ball is likely to be shared by Baroda's Irfan Pathan (senior), Siddharth Trivedi of Gujarat and the skipper himself.
Former India stumper Chandrakant Pandit is the West Zone coach.
East Zone has as many as seven players from Bengal and six of them -- Gandhi, Rohan Gavaskar, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Sanjib Sanyal, Sourasish Lahiri and Shib Shankar Paul -- are likely to play in the eleven.
Former Indian opening batsman Shiv Sundar Das of Orissa, wicketkeeper batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Shahid Khan (both from Jharkhand) are the others to watch along with Niranjan Behera of Orissa.
R Venkatram is the coach of the East Zone team.
Teams
West Zone: Ajit Agarkar (captain), Vinayak Mane, Amol Muzumdar, Satyajit Parab, Yusuf Pathan, Rajesh Pawar, Irfan Pathan (sr), Parthiv Patel (WK), Akash Christian, Niraj Patel, Siddharth Trivedi, Dhiraj Jadhav, Ranjit Khirid, Dhruv Mohan and Jaydev Shah.
Coach: Chandrakant Pandit.
East Zone: Devang Gandhi (captain), Rohan Gavaskar, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Sanjib Sanyal, Sourasish Lahiri, Ranadeb Bose, Shib Shankar Paul, Shiv Sundar Das, P Jayachandra, Niranjan Behera, D Mangaraj, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Shahid Khan, V Sarvanan and Manoj Singh.
Coach: R Venkatram.
