The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : U.P. starts favourite

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 05, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

U.P. starts favourite

G. Viswanath

The team has been having a brilliant run of late

Mumbai: Uttar Pradesh has advanced brilliantly of late. It clinched its maiden National championship and also has provided a handful of its budding stars to the Indian side. The side from Central India looks favourite when it locks horns with the Railways for the BCCI's all-India 50-overs-a-side limited-overs tournament title here at the Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday.

Railways was markedly a weak side in the Ranji Trophy Elite Group, and is licking its wounds after being relegated to the Plate Group.

Uttar Pradesh won the Ranji Trophy defeating Bengal at the K.D. Singh Babu Stadium, Lucknow, with Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina and Piyush Chawla playing their parts and the home supporters rooting all the way.

In the run up to the title clash, the finalists thrashed their opponents Baroda and Bengal by over 100 runs.

Tejinder Pal Singh, Amit Pagnis, J.P. Yadav, Shreyas Khanolkar and Sunjoy Bangar were the main run getters for Railways in the league and knockout. It will be interesting to see how these batsmen face leg-spinner Piyush Chawala, who will play his first match of the tournament. Left-hander Jyoti Yadav leads the Uttar Pradesh batting department with 378 runs.

The teams (from):

Railways: Sunjoy Bangar (captain), Amit Pagnis, Tejinder Pal Singh, J.P. Yadav, Shreyas Khanolkar, Raja Ali, Yere Goud, Shankara Rao, Sushant Manjrekar, Rahul Deb, Harvinder Singh, Kulamani Parida, Madan Yadav, Santosh Sahu, Rahul Thakur.

Uttar Pradesh: Ravikant Shukla (captain), Shivakant Shukla, Jyoti Yadav, Pravin Kumar, Salabh Srivastava, Amir Khan, Rohit Prakash, Pravin Gupta, Avinash Yadav, Piyush Chawla, Mohammed Saif, Ratnesh Mishra, Ali Hamid, Ashwin Mandhani.

Umpires: Rajan K. Seth and H.S. Sekhon.

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