Kolkata:

Assam will be led by medium pacer Abu Nechim Ahmed, as Orissa and Bengal too have named their respective squads for 2011 edition of the Buchi Babu All-India invitation cricket tournament to be held in Chennai from August 11-30.

The Assam Cricket Association also announced the roping in of Abu Nechim`s Mumbai Indians teammate in IPL Rajagopal Sathish and Royal Challengers Bangalore`s left arm spinner J Syed Mohammad and retained veteran Maharashtra skipper Dheeraj Jadhav, though the trio will not be available for the TNCA tournament.

“It is the first time I am going to lead the side. The squad is a balanced one with good bowling and batting line-ups. I am looking forward to it,” Abu Nechim said.

Bengal and Orissa, on the other hand, picked new-look squad with the former side to be led by Subhomoy Das.

The experimental Bengal outfit has three from the current under-19 team, some new players and a few seniors including skipper Das.

Wicket-keeper batsman Haladhar Das has been retained skipper of the Orissa squad that has 11 newcomers.

Only five players in the Orissa line-up — skipper Das, Paresh Patel, Subit Biswal, Dhiraj Singh and Basanta Mohanty – have the experience of playing for the senior side.

Sixteen state teams and two local sides – TNCA President`s XI and TNCA XI- will vie for top honours in the tournament carrying a prize purse of Rs 1 lakh, while the runners-up will get Rs 50,000.

The Squads

Assam: Abu Nechim Ahmed (c), Tarjinder Singh (vc), Kunal Sakia (wk), Pallav Das, Rishav Das, Amit Sinha, Abhijit Singha Roy, Gokul Sharma, Swarupam Purkayastha, Prakash Bhagat, Dhiraj Goswami, Roshan Basfore, Sujoy Tarafdar, Arup Das and Prasanta Sonowal.

Orissa: Haladhar Das (c), Paresh Patel, Kameswar Barik (wk), Subit Biswal, Arya Debasis Bhatt, Barun Panigrahi, Arvind Singh, Tukuna Sahu, Debasis Mohanty Junior, Dhiraj Singh, Basanta Mohanty, Sukanta Das, Saiba Singh, Soumendra Das, Ananda Sahoo and Jayanta Behera

Bengal: Subhomoy Das (c), Partha Sarathi Bhattacharya, Rohan Banerjee, Arindam Ghosh, Arnab Ghosh (wk), Arjun Das, Sandipan Das, Sayan Shekhar Mondal, Arnab Nandi, Anirban Gupta, Mohammad Shami Ahmed, Ravikant Singh, Arunlal Yadav, Koushik Ghosh and Uddipan Mukherjee.

PTI

source: http://www.zeenews.india.com / Z News / Home> Sports> Cricket / August 09th, 2011