The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Teams wary of the pitch

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Thursday, Dec 01, 2005

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Sport - Cricket

Teams wary of the pitch

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The serene setting at the Jamia Millia forms a perfect stage for a first-class encounter but the teams, on the eve of the Ranji Trophy elite league match, appeared apprehensive about the playing surface.

Delhi and Bengal, even as they went through the paces on Wednesday, feared a rank turner in the wake of hurried preparation for this contest. The venue had featured the India-England women's Test apart from a couple of local fixtures in the past 10 days leading to doubts in the minds of the players.

A turner?

Bengal coach Paras Mhambrey said, "Obviously it looks like a result-oriented pitch. I think the ball would turn a lot but then I'm not worried. We've the required strength in our attack and we don't just depend on the seamers (S.S. Paul and Ranadeb Bose)." The former India seamer was referring to the combined spin-power of Saurasish Lahiri and Manoj Tewari.

The affable curator, however, assured the pitch would behave. "We've done our best and hopefully the pitch should produce a good contest. There is no need to be alarmed about the playing surface," said the experienced Noor Mohammad.

For Delhi, the `home advantage' factor does not work at the Jamia Millia. A couple of players would spend four hours daily to reach the venue and return home, a few others may be luckier to save an hour, but importantly Delhi has had no control over the preparation of the ground for this key match. Having conceded points to Mumbai in its opening encounter, the Amit Bhandari-led side just cannot afford to drop any more points at this stage.

"We need to pull up our socks and make the most of whatever is available. It may not be quite like playing at the Kotla but we hope to get some advantage from the pitch," said Delhi coach Madan Lal, who may be tempted to play all the three spinners — Sarandeep Singh, Rahul Sanghvi and Chetnya Nanda.

The teams (from):

Delhi: Amit Bhandari (Captain), Aakash Chopra, Shikhar Dhawan, Mithun Manhas, Rajat Bhatia, Varun Kumar, Pradeep Chawla, Rajan Gupta, Sarandeep Singh, Kuunal Lal, Chetnya Nanda, Rahul Sanghvi, Aditya Jain, Mukesh Dewan and Yogesh Sachdeva.

Bengal: Deep Dasgupta (Captain), Arindam Das, Debang Gandhi, Rohan Gavaskar, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Saurasish Lahiri, Shib Sankar Paul, Ranadeb Bose, Manoj Tewari, Shib Sagar Singh, Shubhamoy Das, Ashok Dinda, Wriddhiman Saha and Abhishek Jhunjhunwala.

Umpires: Messrs G. A. Pratap Kumar and Tej Handu; Match Referee: S. Srinivasan.

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