The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Bengal keen to halt losing streak

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 22, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Bengal keen to halt losing streak

By Our Sports Reporter

KOLKATA, DEC. 22. Bengal, rattled by three consecutive defeats, is faced with a do-or-die situation as it takes on strong Delhi in the penultimate round of the Elite group A league for the Ranji Trophy.

Delhi has the definite edge ahead of the match on Wednesday with its batting strength bolstered by the arrival Gautam Gambhir. The Delhi skipper, Ajay Jadega sounded confident about his team's chances and said he hoped to pick up the full quota of points against the host.

Delhi, which is yet to get a outright win, is placed third with eight points garnered from four first innings leads. A win will definitely brighten its prospect of joining Mumbai in the semifinals.

On the other hand, Bengal, having had a disastrous round thus far, is in an emergency mode. Three under-performers have been dropped paving way for fresh names in the squad. The host batting looks set for an overhaul with the possibility of a couple of new names getting into the job.

Bengal has just four points from a outright win in against Karnataka in the first match before the drought set in. And having made Eden Gardens as the venue for the first time in the tournament, the host hopes to see a change in fortune against Delhi.

The teams (from):

Bengal: Rohan Gavaskar (capt.), Arindam Das, Deep Dasgupta (wicketkeeper), Subhomoy Das, Rakesh Krishnan, Manoj Tiwari, Lakshmi Ratan Shukla, Murtaza Lodhgar, Ritam Kundu, Ranadeb Bose, Shib Shankar Paul, Sourav Sarkar, Anirban Chatterjee, Dilip Yadav and Anustup Majumdar.

Delhi: Ajay Jadeja (capt.), Akash Chopra, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan, Mithun Manhas, Vijay Dahiya (wicketkeeper), R. Bhatia, Sarandeep Singh, Avinav Bali, Chaitanya Nanda, Rahul Sanghvi, Amit Bhandari, N.S. Negi, Kunal Lal, Yogesh Sachdeva and Varun Kumar.

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