Sourav Ganguly keeps his promise, comes forward to help district associations
Kolkata: The Cricket Association of Bengal(CAB) on Thursday announced the 15 men squad for the upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy Knock-out stages. Bengal will face Kedar Jadhav’s Maharashtra on March 15 in the quarter-finals.
Debang Gandhi led senior selection committee have left Debabrata Das and Writtick Chatterjee who were the part of the team in Vijay Hazare Trophy Group stage. Agniv Pan will be the addition in the squad for the knock-outs. Speedstar Mohammed Shami, who has been out of action for long time since the third Test against England in November because of a knee injury, might make a return for Bengal if he gets a fit certificate from NCA.
Shami was not picked in the India squad for the last two Tests against Australia, so there is a huge possibility that Shami might play in the knock-outs for Bengal. In the Vijay Hazare Trophy Group stage he played the last match against Gujarat where he bowled 7 overs and gave 36 runs without picking any wicket. If Shami gets a fit certificate, he will join the Bengal Team in Delhi.
Bengal Squad: Manoj Tiwary, Srivats Goswami, Abhishek Raman, Sudip Chatterjee, Anustup Majumder, Agniv Pan, Pankaj Shaw, Abhimanyu Ishwaran, Pragyan Ojha, Amir Gani , Ashoke Dinda, Sayan Ghosh, Kanishk Seth, Ishan Porel, Mukesh Kumar.
In another news, a meeting of West Bengal District Sports Fedaration was held at the Aryan tent on Thursday. A number of 21 districts are a part of this association and among them 18 districts are affiliated to CAB. The other three who are not affiliated to CAB, Darjeeling, Alipurduar and East Midnapore were also present in this meeting.
The association organizes cricket, football and many other tournaments in all parts of West Bengal, but they are striving in financial crunch these days and they desperately needed some sponsors to revive from this problem. Few months ago CAB President Sourav Ganguly was appointed as their chief patron and today he brought a sponsor for the Association who will give them an amount of 1 crore a year to for the improvement of sports in these 21 districts. CAB President gave a cheque of rupees 18 lakh to the Association on Thursday.
In the meeting Sourav told the members of the association that CAB is looking after the improvement of cricket and the association should look after the other sports which are being neglected.” CAB is doing everything for the betterment of cricket. I want to tell the members of every district that from now on they should look after the development of other sports like Football, Volleyball, Athletics, Gymnastics and most importantly every district must organize coaching camps to help the talented footballers to grow as a player,” said Sourav.
A committee have also been formed to look after this matter. The committee was asking for a temporary tent at Maidan. Sourav said that he will look after the matter.
Association secretary Goutam Goswami lauded Sourav Ganguly for his work on development of sports in Bengal. “ Sourav is doing a great work for development in cricket. We told him that the district units are striving in financial crunch and if you could help us with some financial support and today he has helped us by giving 18 lakhs for the development of sports in districts,” said Goswami.