We have no-one to blame but ourselves Coach Rod Marsh Marsh's comments in full

England A slumped to an embarrassing defeat as South Zone scored 503-4 to win their Duleep Trophy match by six wickets in Gurgaon.

Venugopal Rao (228) and Subramaniam Badrinath (100) shared an unbroken stand of 212 to clinch victory.

Sridharan Sriram had earlier made 117 before he was caught behind off pace bowler Sajid Mahmood.

South Zone's total has only been exceeded on three occasions in successful fourth innings run chases.

It was only 10 runs short of the world record established last month by Central Province in a domestic game in Sri Lanka.

But it was a new record for a first-class game in India, beating the 427-9 made by a Commonwealth XI against a Bengal Minister's XI at Calcutta in 1964-65.

HIGHEST SUCCESSFUL 4TH INNINGS RUN CHASES 513-9 Central Province v Southern Province, Kandy 2004 507-7 Cambridge University v MCC, Lord's 1896 506-6 South Australia v Queensland, Adelaide 1991-92 503-4 South Zone v England A, Gurgaon 2004 502-6 Middlesex v Notts, Trent Bridge 1925 502-8 Players v Gentlemen, Lord's 1900

England A lost the initiative during the final session of the third day's play after dismissing both South Zone openers with only one run on the board.

Rao and Sriram continued their partnership in the same positive vein, looking confident against both seam and spin.

They added 56 to their overnight 171-2 before Sriram edged a catch to wicket-keeper Matt Prior off Mahmood,

Simon Jones, who is bound for the West Indies with the senior England team, again proved expensive and ended the game with figures of 0-89 from 13.5 overs.

Sridharan Sharath was caught by Kevin Pietersen off Napier for 28 after helping add 64 for the fourth wicket.

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But Rao, who will be 22 on Thursday, continued in authoritative fashion and achieved the highest score of his career when he reached 152 not out.

England failed to take a wicket after lunch as he and Badrinath accelerated towards South Zone's target.

They were 57 runs short at tea and took only 4.2 overs as the match ended in a flurry of strokes.

South Zone: S Ramesh (capt), I Khaleel (wkt), Y Venugopal Rao, S B Joshi, S Sriram, N P Singh, B M Rowland, S Sharath, R Ramkumar, S Santh, S Badrinath.