The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Punjab to go all out

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Tuesday, Jan 03, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

Punjab to go all out

Special Correspondent

Andhra brimming with confidence

VISAKHAPATNAM: The cricket lovers here wished had the BCCI directed Punjab players Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh too to play in the Ranji matches. Spectators in large numbers would have then flocked the ACA-VDCA Stadium here from Tuesday for the team's Ranji Trophy Elite Group `B' match against host Andhra.

A good crowd is still expected to watch the local hero Y. Venugopala Rao and India discard Dinesh Mongia, who will lead the Andhra and Punjab sides respectively.

Andhra is brimming with confidence after beating Haryana by a huge margin in its previous match, and Punjab looks determined to garner the maximum points from the match, its last engagement to stay in the race for the second semifinal berth from group `B'.

"We need to go all out and we are confident of doing it. Our team is well balanced. However, we don't underestimate Andhra, which is doing well'', said the Punjab coach and former Pakistan captain, Inthikab Alam.

Stick to the basics

The Andhra coach Syed Abid Ali, who successfully captained the side to the top of South Zone a few seasons ago in Ranji, is not overawed.'' As long as the guys combine as a team, show the right attitude and stick to the basics, the opposition does not matter. Positive results will come", Abid Ali said.

Andhra captain Venu said that since the team had one more match to go, two points from the match against Punjab would be enough. Shahabuddin's fine bowling (27 wickets from four matches) is a big advantage for the side. Punjab medium pacer Harvinder Singh, who was down with fever since the team reached here a few days ago, had to be sent back. The team is left with 13 players now.

The teams: Punjab (from): Dinesh Mongia (capt.), Pankaj Dharmani, Ritender Singh Sodhi, Munish Sharma, Gaurav Gupta, Ravneet Ricky, Uday Paul, Gangandeep Singh, Lov Ablish, Ishan Malhotra, Rajesh Sharma, Vipul Sharma and Amit Unyal.

Andhra (from): Y. Venugopala Rao (capt.), M.S.K. Prasad, Y. Gnaneswara Rao, A.T. Rayudu, K. Kumaraswamy, A.S.K. Varma, K.S. Shahabuddin, Balaji K. Singh, K. Israel Raju, D. Kalyan Krishna, Y. Lakshman Kishore, M.N. Vikram Varma, T. Suman and Md. Faiq.

Umpires: A. Bhattacharjee and S.K. Porel; Match referee: Anil Patel.

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