Bengal look to bounce back against struggling Hyderabad

Desperately eyeing a return to winning ways, Bengal will rely on their spinners to do the trick against a struggling Hyderabad in their Ranji Trophy fixture from Sunday. Bengal suffered a humiliating nine-wicket defeat to Vidarbha inside two days in an away fixture in the last round, slipping to eighth position in the cross pool of Group A and B teams. With five teams set to make the cut for the quarterfinals, the task for the Arun Lal-coached side has become all the more challenging. Bengal failed to take any advantage of the home conditions, settling for three points in their last two outings, against Andhra and Gujarat at the Eden Gardens. Bengal have now gone for a spin-friendly track at the Kalyani Stadium, about 70-kms from here, hoping to win a match.

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"Team's looking in good shape. We have practised well and the players are looking focused and confident. It looks a good cricketing wicket. The ball might not turn from the first ball but it can gradually," Bengal skipper Abhimanyu Easwaran said.

"We might go in with three spinners, let's see how's the wicket tomorrow morning. We need to get runs as a group. We need to score good runs and get to a good total."

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Under-23 batsman Kazi Junaid Saifi, who was initially named in the squad against Gujarat before being sent back for the Col. CK Nayudu Trophy matches, has been drafted in. With Ritwik Roy Chowdhury injured, he is likely to make his Ranji debut. Left-hander Saifi got the nod after scoring 534 runs to help Bengal win the National U-23 one-day tournament this season.

"You can't control things like injury. The batters have prepared well for the game and we just need to get couple of hundreds if we can." Bengal will also look up to the veteran Utpal Chatterjee, who will assist the side for the Hyderabad match, with bowling coach Ranadeb Bose being left out. Hyderabad have been one of the weak teams of the group with the Arjun Yadav-coached team losing four of the five matches this season to sit at the bottom of the table.

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Squads

Bengal: Abhimanyu Easwaran (captain), Manoj Tiwary Anustup Majumdar, Shreevats Goswami (wk) Abhishek Raman, Arnab Nandy, Koushik Ghosh, Shahbaz Ahmad, Writtick Chatterjee, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Ayan Bhattacharya, Shreyan Chakraborty, Kazi Junaid Saifi and Nil Kanta Das.

Hyderabad: Tanmay Agarwal (captain), P Akshath Reddy, B Sandeep, Himalay Agarwal, Kolla Sumanth (wk), Mehdi Hasan, Tanay Tyagrajan, CV Milind, Rahul Buddi, M Ravi Kiran, Yudhvir Singh, Saaketh Sairam, J Mallikarjun (wk), T Ravi Teja, Mir Jaweed Ali, Y Shravan Kumar. 

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