Indian news round-up

The selection committee of the Cricket Association of Bengal have sprung a few surprises by omitting notable players like Srikant Kalyani, Alokendu Lahiri, Wrichik Majumder and Sujay Parui from the list of Ranji probables for the 2001-02 season.

The 28 probables will start their conditioning under the guidance of Vace Paes from the first week of August. Bengal's new coach, former Test all rounder Karsan Ghavri will reach Kolkata on July 27. This year the Bengal team will play in the Buchi Babu Trophy tournament in Chennai and the Moin-ud-Dowlah Trophy tourney in Hyderabad. The senior selection committee and the junior selection committee sat along with The CAB President Jagmohan Dalmiya and the joint secretaries and the assistant secretaries while selecting the players.

The probables: Arindam Das, Amitava Chakrabarty, Aurijeet Basu, Nikhil Haldipur, Rohan Gavaskar, Devang Gandhi, Subhamoy Das, Saikat Mukherjee, Soumen Singh, Safi Ahmed, Souvik Mukherjee, Subhradip Ganguly, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Ranadeb Bose, Sabir Ali, Shib Shankar Paul, Samad Akhtar, Sanjib Sanyal, Dharmendra Singh, Samrat Guha, Utpal Chatterjee, Pradipta Majumder, Gaurav Sharma, Murtaza Lodghar, Sourashish Lahiri, Saujan Biswas, Deep Dasgupta and Ritesh Jaiswal.

The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, with the help of sponsors, regularly conducts age wise tournaments in the age group of 12, 14 and 16 to help unearth young talent. And the Parle-G TNCA C Ramaswamy Trophy (under-16) tournament is a step in this direction.

According to Ashok Kumbhat, secretary, TNCA, Parle Products Ltd are sponsoring this tournament for the second year in succession. The tournament will be played at various grounds in Chennai from July 25. As many as 54 school teams are in the fray. Matches will be played on 30-over basis initially and on a knock-out format till the prequarter-finals. The last 16 teams will be divided into four groups and the matches will be played on 50 overs on a league basis. The top team in each group will qualify for the semifinals to be played on 50 overs. The final will be a two day match.

To make it attractive to the young participants, the sponsors have come up with a number of incentives. There are prizes for the teams who qualify for the semifinals while the prize money to the finalists is Rs 9,000 (runners-up) and Rs 16,000 (winners) besides trophies. There will be a man of the match award for all games. Uniforms will be given to the players with the logo of the sponsors and the TNCA.