Kolkata: The growing discord between the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and left-arm spinner Pragyan Ojha reached to escalated to a level even worse as now the Bengal cricketing body has ‘failed to establish’ any contact with him before they named their squad for the two-match warm-up tour against Gujarat which begins on September 17.
Ojha had represented Bengal in two seasons but had wanted to return to his home state of Hyderabad this season but he hasn’t been granted a NOC (No-Objection Certificate) by the CAB as it’s president Sourav Ganguly had said that the team needed him.
CAB Joint Secretary Abhishek Dalmiya, as quoted by PTI said, “We have not yet established any contact with him, so we are forced to name the squad without him.”
Bengal have already started their pre-season training for more than two weeks now but Ojha hasn’t informed any details about his whereabouts. He hasn’t joined the training camp under coach Sairaj Bahutule.
Bengal’s 17-member squad to fly to Gujarat will be lead by wicketkeeper batsman Shreevats Goswami as Manoj Tiwary, the regular captain of the team is currently playing the Duleep Trophy.
The Bengal team would play one four-day and one three-day match in the tour.
Ojha, once a regular in the Indian team in the five-day format hasn’t played international cricket for a long time now.
Here is the squad-
Shreevats Goswami (c), Anustup Majumder, Koushik Ghosh, Purab Joshi, Abhishek Raman, Abhishek Mitra, Agniv Pan, Writtick Chatterjee, Aamir Gani, Pradipta Pramanik, Aritra Chatterjee, B Amit, Sayan Ghosh, Ishan Porel, Kanishk Seth, Mukesh Kumar and Sourav Mondal.