Representatives of the East Zone at the meeting on Tuesday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, Dec. 2: The Assam Cricket Association hosted the first-ever zonal selection meet here today in which the East Zone women’s team for the inter-zonal limited-over league tournament was named.

This is the first time a zonal team selection meeting of the East Zone was held away from Calcutta. The Cricket Association of Bengal has been the zonal convenors ever since the nation was divided into five cricketing zones under the BCCI.

The ACA was made the zonal convenor during the BCCI’s September 28 meeting in Mumbai. Today’s meeting was the first ever to select any zonal team here. The ACA had last month hosted a zonal meeting in which the venue and the fixture for the Polly Umrigar Trophy East Zone inter-state school tournament was finalised.

Today’s meeting, chaired by national women’s team selector Mithu Mukherjee, was attended by selection committee representatives from six BCCI affiliate states of the zone — Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura and Manipur. The tournament will be held tentatively from December 23 and the venue is yet to be finalised.

Sources, however, said there was a strong possibility of the venue being Orissa.

Two Assam players, Mandeep Kaur and Nita Kumbang, have been named in the 15-member squad, led by Jhulan Goswami as the skipper.

The other members in the squad include six players from Bengal, Jhulan Goswami, Ria Choudhury, Rituparna Roy, Ananya Mitra, Dea Sarkar and Kathakali Banerjee. The three players from Jharkhand are Kavita Roy, Seema Singh and N. Satma while the two selected from Orissa are Kadambini Mahakud and Priyanka P. Sahu. One player from Tripura, Rima Chakraborty, and one from Manipur, W. Ganga, have been selected.

The selection assumes significance as this is the first time a Manipur player has been named in the zonal team. The state was recognised by the BCCI last year.

The meeting discussed measures to develop women’s cricket in the zone.