Uttar Pradesh host Bengal in a Ranji Trophy battle of struggling cricket teams beginning at the Mohan Meakin ground here tomorrow.
Though both teams would have wanted to be placed higher after five matches, Bengal have a better chance of making the quarterfinals.
The visitors have 10 points from a loss and four draws while the Piyush Chawla-led Uttar Pradesh play their first game here as the bottom-placed team in Group A. They have only seven points from three losses, a win and a draw.
While Bengal managed a favourable draw in their last game against Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh will have to put a heavy away loss against Tamil Nadu behind.
UP medium-pacer RP Singh is recovering from an injury and is unlikely to take part in tomorrow's game.
Bengal skipper Laxmi Ratan Shukla is positive about his team's chances in the four-day game.
"I don't want to dwell too much on the past. Tomorrow is a new day. I also won't like to speak on our bowlers inability to take 20 wickets. Hopefully there is a good contest between bat and ball tomorrow," said Shukla.
Squads:
Bengal - Laxmi Ratan Shukla (c), Arindam Das, Amit Banerjee, Rohan Banerjee, Suvojit Banerjee, Sudip Chatterjee, Ashok Dinda, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shreevats Goswami, Saurasish Lahiri, Satyabrata Murmu, Shib Paul, Veer Pratap Singh, Sourav Sarkar, Iresh Saxena, Manoj Tiwary.
Uttar Pradesh - Piyush Chawla (c), Eklavya Dwivedi, Prashant Gupta, Akash Verma, Arish Alam, Amir Khan, Amit Mishra, Israr Azim, Kuldeep Yadav, Praveen Kumar, Ali Murtaza, Parvinder Singh, Ankit Rajpoot, Umang Sharma, RP Singh, Tanmay Srivastava.
