Gutsy Bengal take on confident Maharashtra on sporting track

It will be a battle between top-notch batting line-up against a quality seam attack when Maharashtra with the likes of Kedar Jadhav and Vijay Zol take on Laxmi Ratan Shukla-led Bengal in the Ranji Trophy semifinals, starting here tomorrow.
Bengal, who have been a surprise package in the national championship, peaked at the right time defeating Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Railways in three back-to back matches while Maharashtra recorded an inspirational eight-wicket win against defending champions Mumbai in the Lion's den at the Wankhede Stadium.
While speedster Ashoke Dinda (37 wickets) will try to get rid of Kedar Jadhav (1034) runs, the wily Shib Shankar Paul (17 wickets) will try to get India U-19 skipper Vijay Zol (516).

Inswing bowler Sourav Sarkar will try to sort out another heavy scorer Harshad Khadiwale (944) who has scored most of his runs on flat decks. Even Ankit Bawne (492 runs) and Sangram Atitkar (460 runs) have been amongst runs.
It will be the trio of Jadhav, Khadiwale and Zol with a total of 2494 runs this season up against Dinda, Paul and Sarkar, who have shared 69 wickets among them.
Add to it, all-rounder Saurashish Lahiri (249 runs and 20 wickets), who has been a vital cog batting at No 8 and bowling his fastish off-breaks.
The pressure is immense on this Bengal team as they have reached the last-four stage for the first time since their back-to-back final appearances in the 2005-06 and 06-07 season.

"We will probably have two changes in our line-up. Subhamoy Das and Writtick Chatterjee will make way for Koushik Ghosh and Sandipan Das. Koushik is a talented batsman from the U-25 squad and Sandipan is a handy all-rounder. His seam-up stuff will be effective on this kind of hard track," Shukla told PTI on the eve of the match.