Kolkata , December 27 : Bengal selection committee chaired by former India cricketer Debang Gandhi have relied on experience while picking the squad for the national twenty 20 tournament . The sixteen member squad will be lead by Manoj Tiwary . Md Shami , will be available for the first two matches as he will fly with the Indian team to Australia for the ODI & T20 series down under . Shami will be available for Bengal’s match against Hyderabad and Tamil Nadu on Jan 02 & 03 respectively . As a cover up for Shami , the selectors have also kept Aloke Pratap Singh in the team . Selection committee chairman later told the media ,“ The entire middle order batting have failed in Vijay Hazare Trophy due to which the team suffered . Too much of chopping and changing isn’t the solution . At the same time , failure in Vijay Hazare Trophy does not guarantee that the team will fail again .”
On being asked why U’19 cricketers like Kanishk Seth and Pradipta Pramanik are not included in the squad , Debang was quick to remind that both of them are in the Bengal squad for the Cooch Behar Trophy .
Coach Sairaj Bahutule also blamed the failure in middle order that has let the team down in Vijay Hazare Trophy . At the same time he reminded that the team has the character to bounce back ,“ Look , this team has a lot of players who have the experience of playing in IPL . Bengal have done well in this format recent times . So , I am pretty confident that the boys will put up a good show in Mustaq Ali .”
Bengal will play their Mustaq Ali qualifying matches in Nagpur . Their opponents in the tournament are as follows :
January 02 – Hyderabad
January 03 – Tamil Nadu
January 04 – Himachal Pradesh
January 06 – Gujarat
January 07 – Vidharbha
January 09 – Haryana
The knock out stage matches will be played at Mumbai from January 15-20 .
Bengal squad : Manoj Tiwary (capt.) , Laxmi Ratan Shukla , Wriddhiman Saha , Md Shami , Ashoke Dinda , Sreevats Goswami , Sudip Chatterjee , Debabrata Das , Pankaj Shaw , Pramod Chandila , Aamir Gani , Pragyan Ojha , Sayan Sekhar Mondal , Mukesh Kumar , Anurag Tiwary and Aloke Pratap Singh .