Vijay Hazare Trophy: Bengal announces twenty six probable list

Manoj-Tiwary (1)
Bengal announces twenty six probable list for forthcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy on Monday. File Pic

Kolkata: The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) on Monday announced 26 men probable squad for upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy. Bengal is placed in Group C and will face Andhra, Goa, Rajasthan, Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Manoj Tiwary’s men will start their campaign against Andhra at Chennai on February 25.

Surprisingly Anustup Majumdar made his comeback in the team after a long time. After playing the Ranji trophy for Railways in last two seasons, he came back to Bengal with NOC. He also made in Ranji probable this season but failed to secure the spot in final 15 squad. But he had a terrific season with Mohun Bagan this year that’s why the selectors included him in the squad.

Where as, after displaying a poor performance in both Ranji Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy the selectors have their faith on Bengal’s left arm off spinner Pragyan Ojha. He is successful to be in the team once again. When CAB president Sourav Ganguly was asked about the selection of Pragyan Ojha then Sourav said ‘’He is one of the best, so he is in the team’’.

Bengal’s chief selector Devang Gandhi said ‘’ We haven’t shown good performances in last year Vijay Hazare and Mushtaq Ali trophy but we made it to the top of the group in the T-20 trophy. We are hoping to carry our good performance to carry in this tournament too’’. And when he was further asked about Pragyan Ojha , he said, ” Mushtaq Ali trophy will be played in Chennai and the dry wicket will help the spinners a lot’’. But one of the selector in the selection committee was continuously oppose the selection of Ojha. He criticizes his current bowling performance and mainly the fielding which he thinks is not suitable for the format, according to him his movement is too slow in the field which may cause the team some extra runs. But his oppose did not go through due to majority of selectors was voted in favour of Ojha. The selection committee also warned Pragyan Ojha through Bengal coach Sairaj Bahutule that if he don’t perform well in the upcoming trophy then he might not get a further chance in limited over format again.

Following are the fixtures of Bengal in their Vijay Hazare Trophy:

25th February: Andhra vs Bengal

28th February: Goa vs Bengal

1st March: Bengal vs Rajasthan

3rd March: Bengal vs Mumbai

4th March: Bengal vs Madhya Pradesh

6th March: Gujarat vs Bengal

Bengal 26 probable for Vijay Hazare Trophy: Manoj Tiwary, Ashoke Dinda, Shreevats Goswami, Pragyan Ojha, Sudip Chatterjee, Pankaj Shaw, Abhishek Raman, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Debabrata Das, Anustup Majumder, Sayan Sekhar Mondal, Writtick Chatterjee, Purab Joshi, Pramod Chandila, Veer Pratap Singh, Agniv Pan, Ayan Bhattacharjee, Amir Gani, Anurag Tiwary, Sayan Ghosh, Kanishk Seth, Ishan Porel, Mukesh Kumar, Pritam Chakraborty, Amit Kuila, Aritra Chatterjee.