The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Andhra begins favourite

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Friday, Nov 23, 2007
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Andhra begins favourite

Special Correspondent

CUTTACK: The newly-promoted side to the Elite division, Orissa, will be hard pressed to stop the in-form Andhra in the four-day Ranji Trophy group B match beginning at the Barabati Stadium here on Friday.

Beaten by an innings and 10 runs by Uttar Pradesh in the team’s only outing so far, Orissa, playing its last home match of the season, faces too many problems.

The most shocking development has been the sacking of its most successful coach Sritam Das, the man who plotted the team’s promotion to the Elite group last season.

Das was removed from the post after the defeat against U.P. and the team’s fielding coach Abakas Khatua has taken over.

Orissa has to do extremely well to stop Andhra which has drawn the two matches it has played so far. It picked up a point against Punjab playing away and three from the home game against UP.

Strong batting

Andhra, led by M.S.K. Prasad, has shown remarkable batting strength with L.N. Prasad Reddy cracking centuries in both innings against U.P. after scoring a hundred in the second innings against Punjab in the earlier match.

Andhra’s top order also revolves around A.S.K. Varma and opener Hemal Watekar who have all made hundreds this season. Apart from left-arm spinner G. Shankara Rao, the medium-pacers too have been among the wickets.

Orissa relies on its pace attack led by Debasis Mohanty and supported by Sukanta Khatua and Preetamjit Das. However, the area of concern has been the batting where the team relies too much on Test discard Siba Sundar Das who has not clicked so far this season.

The teams (from):

Andhra: M.S.K. Prasad (Capt.), Hemal Watekar, L.N. Prasad Reddy, A.S. K. Varma, Y. Gnaneswara Rao, B. Sumanth, G. Shankara Rao, Mohammad Faiq, D. Kalyankrishna, N. Israel Raju, P. Vijay Kumar, S.B.V. Saraswathi Reddy, A.G. Pradeep, M. Suresh and V. Sandeep.

Orissa: Pravanjan Mullick (Capt.), Siba Sundar Das, Rashmi Ranjan Parida, Niranjan Behera, Subit Biswal, P. Jayachandra, Halhadar Das, D. Mohanty, S. Satpathy, S. Khatua, Preetamjit Das, Rashmi Ranjan Das, Bikash Pati, Sourabha Sehgal and Deepak Behera.

Umpires: Sanjeev Rao (M.P.) and M.S. Mahal (Punjab).

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