Ranadeb Bose

Calcutta: He has shouldered the burden of boosting Bengal’s bowling tirelessly for years. He has been the strike bowler in the true sense of the term, winning numerous matches single-handedly.

While many such accolades can easily be showered on Ranadeb Bose, Bengal’s senior selection committee pulled off a difficult job on Tuesday — they dropped Ranadeb from the squad for the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the national one-day meet.

The decision may surprise many. But the indications of Ranadeb suffering such a fate was there at the very onset of the season. The right-arm medium pacer was dropped from Bengal’s squad for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

At that time, the selectors had reasoned that for a format like Twenty20, the team needed young players and fresh talent and that the intention was to keep Ranadeb fresh for the rest of the season. And now, the selectors have come up with an almost similar answer.

“Ranadeb is certainly an excellent bowler and has given a lot to Bengal cricket. But he is good for the four-day format… We feel that for one-day cricket, youngsters will be better,” said Bengal chief selector Sambaran Banerjee.

But that’s not the primary reason. “The coach and the rest of the selectors were not interested in including him in the team,” Banerjee added. And this, perhaps, is the main reason.

According to sources, the coach was reluctant to include the pacer in his scheme of things and that probably prompted the selectors to axe him.

Strangely, captain Manoj Tiwary, who was in town, was not included in the selection meeting.

But the man concerned has decided that silence will be his answer. When contacted, Ranadeb said: “I have no comments to make on the selection issue… Absolutely nothing. I can only say that I’ll continue to play cricket.”

The squad picked includes Ashok Dinda, Saurav Sarkar and Mohammed Shami Ahmed as the medium pacers. It is true that Bengal didn’t do in the Ranji Trophy. But it is also true that Ranadeb was of course not the worst of the lot as far as performance was concerned.

Abhisekh Jhunjhunwala was the other notable absentee from the 15-member squad.

Meanwhile, according sources, Indian Premier League franchise Sahar Pune Warriors are interested in signing up Ranadeb. The bowler himself, however, said that the Pune-based is yet to contact him.

The squad

Manoj Tiwary (capt.), Wriddhiman Saha, Sreevats Goswami, Arindam Das, Anustup Majumdar, Arnab Nandy, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Saurashish Lahiri, Iresh Saxena, Mohammed Shami Ahmed, Ashok Dinda, Saurav Sarkar, Debabrata Das, Sudip Chatterjee and Soumya Ghosh.