Laxmi Ratan Shukla to lead Bengal in Sri Lanka

Kolkata, Aug 10: Bengal will warm up for the upcoming Ranji Trophy cricket season with a fortnight long tour of Sri Lanka comprising two four-day and three one-day fixtures against SL Combined XI from August 30 to September 13.

According to CAB joint secretary Sourav Ganguly, the tour will be a yardstick for naming Bengal's captain for 2015-16 even as Laxmi Ratan Shukla has been named to lead a 15-member squad today.

"We will asses their performance and whoever does well will be named Bengal skipper," the former India captain told reporters.

He added, "Shukla had been named captain for this Lanka tour only."

Bengal's newly-appointed coach Sairaj Bahutule will take charge on August 16 followed by a 10-day long conditioning camp at the JU second campus ground in Saltlake and the squad will leave for the tour of Sri Lanka on August 28.

Meanwhile, the CAB announced that Lankan great Muttiah Muralitharan, who is a spin bowling consultant in their Vision 2020 programme, will arrive on August 14 for a six-day camp at the Pankaj Gupta Indoor Coaching Centre in Eden Gardens.

The CAB selectors also picked a 16-member squad to be led by offspinner Saurashish Lahiri for the upcoming Buchi Babu Memorial Tournament in Chennai from August 16.

The squad for Sri Lanka tour: Laxmi Ratan Shukla (captain), Manoj Tiwary (vice-captain), Abhimanyu Easwaran, Avishek Das, Sudip Chatterjee, Sreevats Goswami (wicketkeeper), Pankaj Shaw, Naved Ahmed, Pragyan Ojha, Ashok Dinda, Veer Pratap Singh, Aamir Gani, Sourav Sarkar, Alok Pratap Singh and Pradipta Pramanik.

Squad for Buchi Babu Tournament: Sourasish Lahiri (capt), Koushik Ghosh, Samik Karmakar, Sandipan Das, Writtick Chatterjee, Ajmer Singh, Debabrata Das, Ritwick Roy Chowdhury, Deepak Prasad, Anurag Tiwari, Amit Banerjee, Mukesh Kumar, Pritam Chakraborty, Ravi Kant Singh, Sayank Ghosh and Priyank Bengani.

PTI