Kolkata: Bengal cricket team captain Manoj Tiwary today joined the team’s practice session after returning from United States of Amrica where he spent his holidays. The Bengal team is currently doing their pre-season camp at the Videocon ground in Salt Lake. Though they are not practicing with bat or ball, at present the whole team is only focusing on their conditioning camp. They are doing this under the watchful eyes of the team’s physical trainer Sanjib Das.
Manoj & Co. will leave the City of Joy on September 15 to play two practice games ahead of their Ranji Trophy campaign. They will play two four-day practice matches there. Bengal played the invitational KSCA tournament last month with a young side, where they unfortunately lost in the semi-final through toss. According to Bengal captain Manoj Tiwary these two practice games will help him to prepare himself for the new Ranji season.
Bengal started their last season brilliantly with three back to back wins in the first three matches. But unfortunately the team had lost their momentum after that. According to Manoj,” Bengal had to play all their Ranji Trophy matches away from home as it was the format of the trophy that time. But despite of these we performed really well in first three matches. Unfortunately we lost the momentum after that. Later we improved our performance in the limited overs format as we played the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. In All India Mushtaq Ali T-20 tournament East Zone became the champion too. So the over-all season was not that bad.”
Manoj is pretty confident that the young lads of the team will be the trump card of the team in near future.” Sudip Chatterjee, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Pankaj Shaw, Kanishk Seth all are the future of Bengal cricket. We just have to keep our faith on them and I believe that they will deliver too for the side,” said Manoj to the media.
As per the cricket pundits Bengal is in a pretty easy group in this year’s Ranji Trophy. Manoj though have other thoughts in his mind.”In the modern day cricket there is no good or bad side. At the end of the day you have to perform in the field. If we get a good start like the last season, it would be good for the side. I enjoy my captaincy a lot. It motivates me to play well for my side. If we do well in the group stages it would give us more confidence in the knock-out stages,” added Manoj.
Manoj don’t want to get in to the controversy on Pragyan Ojha issue, Accordiing to Manoj,” The officials are looking at this matter and they will decide whether he will play for the side or not.