The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Ganguly steps down as Bengal captain

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Thursday, Nov 30, 2006
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Sport - Cricket

Ganguly steps down as Bengal captain

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: Sourav Ganguly, who captained Bengal in the first Ranji Trophy Elite group league match against Punjab with great success, has stepped down in favour of Deep Dasgupta.

The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), expecting that the former India captain would get a Team India call, has also named a stand-by for the league match against Mumbai beginning at the Eden Gardens here from Friday.

Saradindu Pal, one of the joint secretaries of the CAB, informed the media that there were strong indications of Ganguly's inclusion in the Test squad, to be named on Thursday, to play against South Africa.

"Ganguly has informed me that he would like to relinquish the captaincy in favour of Dasgupta, who led the side to the Ranji Trophy final last season. When we requested him to take charge of the team for the game against Punjab, he insisted that we persist with Dasgupta and he had no problems playing under him as well," he explained.

Reasons

There were two reasons for the CAB to return the captaincy to Dasgupta, he said immediately after the selection committee meeting. "There are strong indications in the media that Ganguly will be back in the Indian Test squad for the South African tour and secondly Ganguly himself wants Dasgupta to lead Bengal in the remaining Ranji matches," he said.

The entire cricketing circle here is agog with expectation of Ganguly being named in the Indian Test squad following the team's poor show in the ODIs and the National selection committee opting for experience to bolster the chances of the team, at least in Test matches. The theory gained much currency after V.V.S. Laxman, another experienced campaigner, was drafted into the ODI side following skipper Rahul Dravid's finger injury.

Ganguly, who desired to lead East Zone in the Duleep Trophy, had a good knock against the eventual champion North Zone at Guwahati and did extremely well in Bengal's first Ranji match against Punjab at Mohali, with both bat and ball.

The squad: Deep Dasgupta (captain, wicketkeeper), Sourav Ganguly, Arindam Das, Subhamoy Das, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Manoj Tiwari, Rohan Gavaskar, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Shiv Sagar Singh, Ranadeb Bose, Sourasish Lahiri, Ashok Dinda, Eklak Ahmed and Amitava Chakraborty. Stand-by: Kamal Hassan Mondal. Coach: Paras Mhambrey. Manager: Samir Dasgupta.