Manoj Tiwary to lead East Zone in Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy

Veteran Bengal batsman Manoj Tiwary has been named as the captain of the East Zone for the Inter-Zonal Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. The tournament kick starts on February 12. Bengal had finished as the top team in the Zonal leg of the tournament in the East Zone. Despite the poor run with the bat, Manoj Tiwary has been given the captaincy hat for the inter-zonal leg. He only had scores of 4, 1 and 39 in the zonal league. The selection panel was headed by Sourav Ganguly and had the representatives from the various state associations.

The involved members were Arup Bhattacharya (Bengal), Debashish Mohanty (Odisha), Ashish Sinha (Jharkhand), Manimoy Roy (Tripura) and Subhrajit Saikia (Assam). As many as 5 players from Bengal were included in the 15-member squad, while 4 players from Jharkhand made it to the list. Interestingly, Jharkhand had finished last in the zonal leg.

Other players to have made it to the squad included 3 players from Assam, 2 from Odisha and one from Tripura. Manoj Tiwary was the preferred skipper after MS Dhoni declared himself unavailable for selection for the fixtures.

Talking about the players, along with Manoj Tiwary, the other players from Bengal in the East Zone squad are Sreevats Goswami, Writtick Chatterjee, Ashoke Dinda and Sayan Ghosh. The players from Jharkhand included Saurabh Tiwary (named as vice-captain of the side), Ishan Kishan (wicketkeeper), Ishank Jaggi, Virat Singh and Shahbaz Nadeem.

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Odisha skipper Biplap Samantray and fellow teammate Dhiraj Singh made it to the squad. From the team, Assam, KB Arun Karthik, Pritam Das and Amit Verma made the cut while AK Sarkar remains to be the only representative from Tripura.

East Zone Squad:

Manoj Tiwary, Saurabh Tiwary, Ishan Kishan, Sreevats Goswami, KB Arun Karthik, Writtick Chatterjee, Shahbaz Nadeem, Ashoke Dinda, Pritam Das, Sayan Ghosh, Biplab Samantray, Dhiraj Singh, Virat Singh, Amit Verma, AK Sarkar.