Manoj Tiwary, who is currently serving as the Sports Minister of Bengal (All India Trinamool Congress), will be gearing up for the upcoming Ranji Trophy to represent his stateside. Formerly a captain of this team, Tiwary did not feature in a domestic game since March 2020, will make his 17th appearance in a Ranji season.
After playing against Saurashtra in the Ranji Trophy final in March 2020, Tiwary joined the All India Trinamool Congress and won the Assembly election from the Shibpur constituency. He did not feature in the COVID-interrupted domestic season for Bengal last year and will be playing under the captaincy of Abhimanyu Easwaran.
Before the main tournament begins, Bengal will feature in a practice game against Mumbai, who are being led by Prithvi Shaw. They will kick-off their campaign against Tripura in Bengaluru, and are grouped alongside Vidarbha, Rajasthan, Kerala, Haryana and Tripura. But before that, the side faces a massive coronavirus scare, owing to which a lot of their players are currently isolated.
Cricket Association of Bengal secretary Snehashish Ganguly mentioned that some players tested positive after CAB had conducted RT-PCR tests on everyone included in the team. Ganguly mentioned that all necessary precautions and actions are being taken to ensure the players remain safe for now, and it’ll be interesting to see how many of them will be available for the fixture against Tripura.
There is a decent amount of experience in the last season’s finalists, who will back themselves to go one step all the way. The 36-year-old Tiwary will remain a vital cog alongside skipper Easwaran and Anustup Majumdar.
The likes of Shahbaz Ahmed, Ishan Porel and Akash Deep provided impressive outputs last time, and the team will be banking on their performances once again.
West Bengal squad
Abhimanyu Easwaran (capt), Manoj Tiwary, Sudip Chatterjee, Anustup Majumdar, Abhishek Raman, Sudip Gharami, Abishek Das, Writtick Chatterjee, Ritwik Roy Chowdhury, Abhishek Porel, Shahbaz Ahmed, Sayan Sekhar Mondal, Akash Deep, Ishan Porel, Mukesh Kumar, Kazi Junaid Saifi, Sakir Habib Gandhi, Pradipta Pramanik, Geet Puri, Nilakantha Das, and Karan Lal.
