The Group B of Ranji Trophy cannot be called a weak group as this year many of the teams, which last year was present in the supreme group i.e. the Group A have been relegated to Group B as they could not resist n Group A for long. Even the winner of 2013/14 and 2014/15 Ranji Trophy, Karnataka team has been relegated t group B as this team could just win 2 games last year.
This year, for the first time, group B looks as interesting as group A as there are few of the best teams present in Group B. Also, the presence of international stars in almost each of the team adds to its weight. The biggest challenge for Group B teams will be to climb to Group A as almost every team will have an eye on that Group A spot, along with that they will have their personal goals alive as well i.e. winning the Ranji Trophy. It is difficult to figure out any favourite team out of the 9 teams present in Group B as every team has its own strength and weaknesses.
It’s a long tournament and the team which will be able to maintain their consistency and form for long will emerge as the ultimate winner of the longest tournament in the history of Indian cricket.
The 9 teams present in Group B are Assam, Delhi, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Saurashtra, and Vidarbha. All the teams except Karnataka will be playing the first round of Ranji Trophy as Karnataka is scheduled to kick off their campaign from the second round.
Let’s have a look at the team combinations and players to watch out for in Group B –
Assam – Gokul Sharma(c), KB Arun Karthik, Tarjinder Singh, Abu Nechim, J Syed Mohammad, Amit Verma, Kunal Saikia, Arup Das, Sibsankar Roy, Krishna Das, S Purkayastha, Pallavkumar Das, Rahul Hazarika, Dhiraj Goswami, Rishav Kalapkanti Das.
Players to watch out for – Krishna Das, J Syed Mohammad
Delhi – Unmukt Chand(c), Rishabh Pant, Pawan Suyal, Vikas Tolas, Milind Kumar, Mohit Sharma. Parvinder Awana, Vaibhav Rawal, Dhruv Shorey, Navdeep Saini, Manan Sharma, Pradeep Sangwan, Nitish Rana, Pulkit Narang, Varun Sood.
Players to watch out for – Unmukt Chand, Rishab Pant, Nitish Rana
Jharkhand – Varun Aaron(c), Saurabh Tiwary, Virat Singh, Anand Singh, Ajay Yadav, Ashish Kumar, Vikas Singh, Shiv Gautam, Samar Quadri, Sunny Gupta, Pratyush Singh, Ishan Kishan, Shahbaz Nadeem, Ishank Jaggi, Kaushal Singh.
Players to watch out for – Virat Singh, Ishan Kishan, Shahbaz Nadeem
Maharashtra – Kedar Jadhav(c), Chirag Khurana, Satyajeet Bachhav, Satyajit Satbhai, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Swapnil Gugale, Harshad Khadiwale, Shubham Kothari, Vishant More, Shrikant Mundhe, Domnic Muthuswami, Anupam Sanklecha, Naushad Shaikh, Rahul Tripathi, Murtaza Trunkwala
Players to watch out for – Kedar Jadhav, Domnic Muthuswami
Odisha – Govinda Poddar(c), AC Sahoo, Basant Mohanty, S Senapati, Deepak Behera, Abinash Saha, Biplab Samantray, Halhadar Das, Pratik Das, Anurag Sarangi, Dhiraj Singh, Sandeep Pattnaik, Rashmi Sahoo, Suryakant Pradhan, Ranjit Singh.
Players to watch out for – Suryakant Pradhann, Ranjit Singh
Rajasthan – Pankaj Singh(c), Rajat Bhatia, Pranay Sharma, Nathu Singh, Kukna Ajay Singh, Tanveer-ul-Haq, Rajesh Bishnoi, Vineet Saxena, Chetan Dinesh Bist, Puneet Yadav, Aniket Choudhary, MN Singh, Siddharth Dobal, Ashok Menaria, Mahipal Lomror.
Players to watch out for – Pankaj Singh, Mahipal Lomror, Nathu Singh
Saurashtra – Jaydev Shah(c), Mohsin Dodia, Sheldon Jackson, Amitoze Singh, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, Avi Barot, Chirag Jani, Aarpit Vasavada, Sunil Yadav, Vandit Jivrajani, Samarth Vyas, Sagar Jogiyani, Jaydev Undakat, Hardik Rathod, Kushang Patel, Deepak Punia, Cheteshwar Pujara, Saurya Sanandiya.
Players to watch out for – Sheldon Jackson, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, Avi Barot, Jaydev Unadkat
Vidarbha – Faiz Fazal(c), Shrikant Wagh, Ravi Jangid, Akshay Wakhare, Aditya Shanware, Ganesh Satish, Ravikumar Thakur, Rajneesh Gurbani, Jitesh Sharma, Akshay Karnewar, Akshay Kolhar, Shalabh Srivastava, Sanjay Ramaswamy, Aditya Sarwate.
Players to watch out for –Faiz Fazal, Ganesh Satish