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 (46 runs, 74b, 6x4, 1x6) and skipper Akash Chopra (27 runs, 50b, 5x4) could reach double figures, while Virat Kohli 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.
