Bengal and Orissa enter knock-out stage

It seems Rahul Dravid isn’t the only captain under whom Sourav Ganguly will be playing this season.

It seems Rahul Dravid isn’t the only captain under whom Sourav Ganguly will be playing this season. For, if the Kolkata left-hander decides to don the Bengal shirt in the round-robin stage of the ongoing Twenty20 championship later this month, then as things stand, the former Indian captain will have to play under young Manoj Tiwary, Bengal’s new skipper.

The zonal leg of the meet wrapped up today. Bengal, by virtue of topping the east zone leg, will play in Ahmedabad in the next round, which gets underway on April 15.

In an interesting development, the Bengal selectors today named new sensation Tiwary as captain for the rest of the campaign, irrespective of whether Ganguly chooses to play.

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“Manoj has led in two of the matches in this leg, and his performance as captain has been impressive. So we have picked him as the captain for the rest of the tournament,” chief selector Arup Bhattacharya told The Indian Express. As for Ganguly, Bhattacharya explained: “Sourav hasn’t yet confirmed to us if he will play. If he decides to do so, then he will automatically be an addition to the 14-member squad that we have picked today.”

Bengal, meanwhile, wrapped up the East Zone leg here today with yet another win at the Eden Gardens. Mercurial allrounder Laxmi Ratan Shukla scored a scorching 76 in their 4-wicket win over minnows Tripura at the Eden Gardens, as Bengal finished with four straight wins to clinch the top spot.

In the day’s other match, Orissa registered a thumping 102-run win over a listless Assam outfit to finish second in the leg.

Brief scores: Orissa 196/4 in 20 overs (N Behera 55, P Patel 51; R Yadav 2/40) beat Assam 94 all out in 20 overs (N Behera 3/16, P Das 2/13) by 102 runs

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Tripura 133/7 in 20 overs (M Singh 34 no; R Bose 3/33, LR Shukla 2/15) beat Bengal 134/6 in 18 overs (LR Shukla 76) by 4 wickets.

Haryana, Punjab move ahead

NEW DELHI: There was nothing except pride at stake for Delhi but they couldn’t save their face either — losing to Services by seven runs in their last league match of the Twenty20 North Zone tournament at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Sunday.

Skipper Virender Sehwag sat out with a groin injury and Delhi rested Rajat Bhatia and Ishant Sharma but the effected changes proved too costly as the hosts failed to chase a meagre total of 132. Left-arm spinner SS Karmakar picked up four wickets as a ‘young’ middle-order offered little resistance.

The other star for Services was Tahir Khan, spanking 70 off 60 balls with six fours and one six.

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In the day’s crucial match, Sunny Singh’s clean-hitting — 65 not out off 45 balls with eight fours and three sixes — steered Haryana to an easy nine-wicket win over Himachal Pradesh and take the second qualifier spot behind Punjab, who at the Palam ground, scored an easy ten-wicket win over Jammu & Kashmir.

Brief scores: Services 132/8 in 20 overs (T Khan 70, M Manhas 3/33) beat Delhi 125 in 19.5 overs (S Dhawan 34, S Karmakar 4/18, Fazil Mohammad 3/30).

HP 113 in 19.2 overs (Sarandeep Singh 30) lost to Haryana 114/1 in 13.5 overs (Sunny Singh 65 not out).

J&K 98 in 19.2 overs (VRV Singh 3/16) lost to Punjab 98 for no loss in 16.1 overs (K Goel 53 not out, R Ricky 39 not out).