Rain could play spoilsport in Bengal’s Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy campaign opener against Jharkhand at the Ekana Stadium B in Lucknow on Tuesday.
It rained most of Monday in Lucknow as Bengal were forced to cancel their match-eve training session and stay indoors. The weather forecast for the next two days isn’t great either.
Bengal do have one eye on the sky, but they are focusing mainly on what’s in their control. “The weather is something we can’t control, so it’s better not to think about it.
“The bottomline is, we have our opening game of the season tomorrow (Tuesday) and that’s where we are concentrating on. We need to express ourselves and play hard. That’s what I have told the guys,” head coach Laxmi Ratan Shukla said from Lucknow.
“We’ve more or less finalised our team although there could be a change or two in the XI based on how the conditions turn out to be. But let’s hope the game happens,” the former all-rounder and captain added.
If the match does get underway, Bengal may field two debutants — left-arm pacer Ravi Kumar and seamer all-rounder Akash Ghatak. Ravi was highly impressive in the India U-19 team’s World Cup triumph earlier this year, while Ghatak graduated from the U-25 level.
Senior pacer Akash Deep and young Ravi are likely to begin proceedings with the ball, while Pradipta Pramanik and Writtick Chatterjee could be the two specialist spinners in Bengal’s line-up.
In terms of their batting, Ranjot Singh Khaira may partner skipper Abhimanyu Easwaran at the top, with the likes of Sudip Gharami, Ritwik Roy Chowdhury and Chatterjee likely to follow.
The team management, though, is still undecided over whether to include both wicketkeeper-batsmen Abishek Porel and Agniv Pan in the XI or any one of them.
