At 81 for five on Day One of the Duleep Trophy quarter-final, South Zone were down and out for the count. 

Impressive bowling by rookie fast bowler Umesh Yadav as also the more experienced Pankaj Singh had served to put Central Zone well on top when Dinesh Karthik stepped up to play an innings of real quality.

It was counter-attacking at its best, the wicketkeeper-batsman putting together an incredible 113-ball 153 to save his team the blushes and also provide them a chance to stay in the match.

It was a star-studded South batting line-up that took the field on Thursday that had an extra batsman forced on them, one thought.

Perhaps skipper VVS Laxman (or whoever it was who took the decision) had an inkling that that it would not do to just have Robin Uthappa, Rahul Dravid, S Badrinath, Karthik and Laxman himself and so the need to have a cushion in another batsman at six at the cost of a fifth bowler, a decision that just may come to haunt them.

Whatever the case may have been, had it not been for numbers seven (Karthik no less), eight and nine, South would have been defending a sub-100 score rather than the eventual 329 that they put together at run-a-minute.

Laxman had said on Wednesday that he expected the Chinnaswamy Stadium pitch to provide some assistance to the quick bowlers during the first hour on Day One, more so with the Kookaburra ball in use.

Brief scores:

South Zone (I Innings): 329 in 73.5 overs (Dinesh Karthik 153, M Suresh 58, Pankaj Singh 2-77, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 2-68, Umesh Yadav 5-76).

Central Zone (I Innings): 30 for no loss (Tanmay Srivastava batting 13, Shivakant Shukla batting 11).

In many ways, the South Zone team’s Duleep Trophy campaigns have been much like that of Tamil Nadu’s in the Ranji Trophy. Always a side with potential, most times teeming with talent but with no real results to show for the same.

That they last won the Duleep Trophy title as many as 13 years ago, in the 1995-96 season, should therefore not come as too much of a shock.

VVS Laxman, the South Zone skipper, is obviously aware of the poor record in the past and seemed intent on setting it right, starting with the quarter-final against the Md Kaif-led Central Zone, beginning on Thursday at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Barring one or two of the usual quota-based selections and at least one please-those-in-power pick, Laxman does have the side to pull it off not just in this match but in the next two rounds as well, provided of course the talent on paper counts for something on the field too.

With five of the probable top six batsmen having international experience, none more so than a certain Rahul Dravid, and a new ball attack that can at any point of time step up for national duty again, what with S Sreesanth and L Balaji raring to make a comeback, South certainly have the personnel to go all the way in the tournament.

Will they is a different question and some of the answers may lie with Central, who may start second best but are well capable of causing an upset, the good form of batsman such as Shivkant Shukla, Yere Goud and Kaif himself, promising much.

Where Central are streets ahead is in the spin department, though the pitch here does not provide much cause for cheer for the slow men.

Laxman, in fact, called the bluff right away when he dismissed the green covering, saying that he expected the pitch to be slow to start with and get progressively slower and lower.

This, of course, means that both teams will depend on their faster men to for reverse swing.