Royal Bengal Tigers have been in terrific form, a 10-wicket defeat at the hands of Ahmedabad Rockets an aberration amid a fine run.
GURGAON: Royal Bengal Tigers have been in terrific form, a 10-wicket defeat at the hands of Ahmedabad Rockets an aberration amid a fine run.
That loss last week would have probably rankled had they not carved out a masterful eight-wicket victory over Dhaka Warriors in their last match.
Mithun Chakraborty’s confident boys now take on Chandigarh Lions at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium here on Tuesday, confident of getting back to playing top class cricket.
“I think we have got over that loss. Our batting has been shaping up well and we just want to go out and do our best,” said Bengal skipper Craig McMillan, having had the satisfaction of seeing his team top the points table along with Chennai Superstars. Both Bengal and Chennai have four wins from five matches, but the latter is slightly ahead on net run-rate.
The Tigers were impressive in their last outing against the Dhaka team, which had notched up a formidable 172 thanks to attractive half-centuries from Alok Kapali (65) and Aftab Ahmed (61). But the Bengal boys conquered the total with 10 balls to spare, with outstanding efforts from Deep Dasgupta (80) and Rohan Gavaskar (51).
“Not just these two batsmen, the presence of Hamish Marshall and Lance Klusener too have boosted our batting,” said McMillan, whose team beat Lahore Badshahs, Delhi Giants and Mumbai Champs in their first three matches.
Chandigarh, too, started well in the tournament, putting it across Mumbai and Chennai before losing by nine wickets to Hyderabad Heroes mainly because of a batting failure.
But the suspension of skipper Chris Cairns and frontline batsman Dinesh Mongia would be a big setback for the Chandigarh team and new skipper Andrew Hall will have to use his resources well if the team has to make an impact.
TEAMS (from)
Royal Bengal Tigers: Craig McMillan (captain), Lance Klusener, Hamish Marshall, Upul Chandana, Andre Adams, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Abu Nechim, Deep Dasgupta, Mihir Diwakar, Pritam Das, Rajiv Kumar, Rohan Gavaskar, Sayed Akhlakh Ahmed, Shiv Sagar Singh, Subhomoy Das, Sujay Tarafdar, Ali Hameed Zaidi.
Chandigarh Lions: Andrew Hall (captain), Matthew Elliot, Lou Vincent, Daryll Tuffey, TP Singh, Sarabjit Singh, Manish Sharma, Chetan Sharma, Amit Uniyal, Rajesh Sharma, Love Ablish, Bipul Sharma, Karanveer Singh, Gaurav Gupta, Harpreet Singh, Ishant Malhotra.
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