The Gujarat cricket team at a practice session at the palace stadium on Wednesday. (Main Uddin Chisti)

Cooch Behar, Dec. 31: Sixty-five years after Maharaja Jagatdipendranarayan presented the Cooch Behar Trophy to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and asked it to begin an Under-19 tournament, a plate final is being held for the first time in this erstwhile princely state.

Beginning January 2, the two finalists, Gujarat and Jharkhand will begin the four-day finals at the stadium in the palace complex here. The match is being looked after by the Cooch Behar District Sports Association (DSA).

Asish Kumar Sarkar, the DSA general secretary, said Cooch Behar should feel proud that the finals is being held here. The winners will enter the elite round to vie for the coveted Cooch Behar Trophy.

“The four-day match can be watched for free as there are no tickets and the match will be inaugurated by the joint secretary of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), Biswarup Dey,” Sarkar said. The DSA had been demanding for hosting a match for long.

The CAB had sent two groundsmen about 25 days ago to lay the pitch and two practice pitches at the stadium. Two umpires empanelled with the CAB are also reaching here tomorrow.

The two teams are here for the past two days. The Jharkhand team comprises 17 members, while the Gujarat outfit has a 19-strong contingent, Sarkar said.

Former Bengal cricketer and cricket anthropologist, Raju Mukherjee, said it was a good thing that a Cooch Behar Trophy match was being played in the place where the trophy originated from.

“The erstwhile princes of Cooch Behar were educated in schools like Eton and Harrow and then in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Cricket was in their blood. The princely state had their own teams in which players from all over the country played as professionals.”

Mukherjee said Jagatdipendranarayan had donated the trophy primarily for a school-level meet probably in 1943. “However, the BCCI began the tournament from the 1945-46. Today it is a premier fixture for budding talents as players like Yuvraj Singh, Mahinder Singh Dhoni and others were first noticed by selectors there.”