‘Tough test’ awaits Raina and newly appointed coaches
LUCKNOW: The Central Zone league of the Syed Mushaq Ali Trophy, starting Tuesday at Raipur, would be an acid test for many in Uttar Pradesh team, including skipper Suresh Raina, and team’s new coach Sujith Somasundar and bowling and fielding coach Mansur Ali Khan.
Raina, who led the side to their maiden Twent20 Trophy in 2015-16, has been struggling with willow, and his own batting in this year’s Duleep Trophy and in Ranji Trophy was pathetic. Raina, who is out of the Team India side for long, still has a chance to make the cut in the Team India for next month’s three Twenty20 matches in South Africa, but only after showing his calibre with willow.
On Tuesday, UP open their campaign against Rajasthan, which already beat Madhya Pradesh by 36 runs in the opening tie on Monday, at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium in Raipur. This will be followed by yet other day matches vs Madhya Pradesh on January 10, vs Railways on January 13. They would be playing their first day/night game against Vidarbha on January 15, before finishing off the league phase with yet another d/n match against Chhattisgarh on January 16. “Both Sujith and Mansur have been appointed to make the side a winning contingent after sacking chief coach Mritunjay Tripathi and bowling coach AW Zaidi in the mid of the season. Like Raina, they also need to prove with worth in the side, and if they failed then what was the need of sacking our own boys only after just one failure,” said a UP Cricket Associations’ insider on condition of anonymity on Monday. The team was announced only on Monday after top UPCA’s officials interveined. “This should have been done three days before by the people at the UPCA office at Kanpur,” said an official. Presence of Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav would be a big boost for the side, and the matches would also help the Kanpur bowler sharpen his skills before the ODI series in South Africa later this month. TEAM
Suresh Raina (captain), Shivam Chaudhary, Samarth Singh, Rinku Singh, Akshdeep Nath, Eklavya Dwivedi, Umang Sharma, Abhishek Goswami, Saurabh Kumar, Mohsin Khan, Amit Mishra, Ankit Rajpoot, Praveen Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav, Sarfaraz Khan and Sarul Kanwar.