Bengal, Lahore Qalandars to take part in Global T20 Namibia series in September

Bengal and Lahore Qalandars will take part in the Global T20 Namibia series, hosted by Cricket Namibia, starting in September. There will be four teams in the competition and the third team is likely to be from South Africa. Bengal, led by Abhimanyu Easwaran, have already named their 16-member squad for the competition.

A number of regular starters such as Shabaz Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Ishan Porel, and Writtick Chatterjee among others are included in the Bengal squad, along with some new faces. Debabrata Das, the joint secretary of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), said that they took the opportunity so that they get to play against the players who will be part of the upcoming T20 World Cup 2022.

“The broadcasters for the tournament came before our president (Avishek Dalmiya) and invited us, Das told ESPNCricinfo. “We took the opportunity to play six-seven games before the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (India’s domestic T20 tournament for men) because we can get to play against a World Cup team.”

We can make our team for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy: Das

“The ambition is that there are several young players who are playing in local cricket in Bengal and performing fantastically with respect to T20s. So we are sending mostly those young guys so that we can make our team for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, ” added the joint secretary of Das.

India’s domestic T20 tournament, Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, will begin late in the year. “The team we are sending abroad, this is a new team. We want to see how they play, how they tackle this tournament,” Das added. Bengal will be going into the tournament on the back of a decent campaign in the Ranji Trophy, qualifying to the semifinal and losing to the eventual champions, Madhya Pradesh in the stage.

Lahore Qalandars, on the other hand, is a franchise from the Pakistan Super League (PSL). They won the PSL 2022, beating Multan Sultans by 42 in the finals. Their captain Shaheen Shah Afridi finished as the competition’s leading wicket-taker with 20 wickets in 13 games.