Mumbai: Hosts West Zone take on East in a day-night contest in the Deodhar Trophy limited-overs meet at the Cricket Club of India here on Friday.

Both teams are level on four points. With North Zone leading the pack on five, a victory would take the winners that much closer to the title.

West, led by Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy-winning skipper Amol Muzumdar, hold a slight edge.

Coach and former Test stumper Chandrakant Pandit said on Thursday that his team boasts of four players who can be utilised during the slog-overs. One of them, he thinks, may be promoted up the order.

“We have Sairaj Bahutule, Yousuf Pathan, Ramesh Powar and Abhishek Nair who are good in the slog phase, but we don’t want to waste all of them lower in the order. The plan is to promote at least one,” he said on the eve of the tie.

Meanwhile, Powar landed in trouble after arriving for match-eve nets without wearing West Zone colours on Thursday.

The short and stocky off-spinner was ticked off by Pandit. Powar had to watch from the sidelines as his teammates went through the drill.

“Discipline is important. He had been provided the Zone colours for the tournament and he came to the nets without wearing them. So I told him he cannot practice,” Pandit explained.

The West Zone coach felt they should have had a bonus point against Central Zone.

“But we did not finish off their innings quickly when they were 165 for eight. We did not win convincingly enough,” he rued.

“That’s what I have told them today (Thursday), not to let anyone get easy runs and that we should play more calculatively against East who have been playing well,” he said.

West look balanced in both the departments, while East, who defeated South Zone in their opener, look stronger in batting and not as effective as their rivals in the slow bowling department.

TEAMS (From):

West Zone: Amol Muzumdar (captain), Wasim Jaffer, Rohit Sharma, Abhishek Nair, Ramesh Powar, Sairaj Bahutule, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Shrikant Mundhe, Parthiv Patel, Sidharth Trivedi, Rakesh Patel, Yousuf Pathan, Pinal Shah, Cheteshwar Pujara and Rajesh Pawar.

East Zone: Deep Dasgupta (captain), Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Manoj Tewary, Rohan Gavaskar, Ranadeb Bose, Shib Shankar Paul, Sourashish Lahiri, Wridhhiman Saha, Shib Sagar Singh, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Parvez Aziz, Abu Nachim, Bikash Pati, Timir Chanda, Debasis Mohanty and Mihir Diwakar.

Umpires: I Sivaram (Hyderabad) and R Radhakrishnan (TN); Third umpire: Sanjeeva Rao (MP).

Match Referee: Anil Patel (Guj).