Bengal and Odisha are facing each other in the quarterfinal match starting from Thursday.
After taking charge as Bengal’s head coach this season, Arun Lal took a leaf out of Bishan Singh Bedi’s book. His stint as team mentor last term had convinced Lal about the need to change the team culture. Tough love was the need of the hour. On the eve of Bengal’s Ranji Trophy quarterfinal against Odisha at Tangi near Cuttack, Lal chose to be anecdotal.
“Once Bishan did this to the Punjab boys. On the first day of the camp, 200 boys turned up. He made them run. Even if someone threw up, he said, ‘OK, now run’. Next day the number came down from 200 to 120. At the end, there were only 40,” he recalled.
“People criticised when I was making the Bengal boys run. When you are feeling down and still running 25 rounds, it makes a difference. I said ‘if you get unfit, go home’. When they will do well this year, they will understand. Look at (Ishan) Porel. Last year, I called him an old woman. This year, he is India material,” Lal took pride in his old-school approach.
Not often do Bengal go to a Ranji Trophy knockout fixture as overwhelming favourites. Lal’s methods have brought a positive change to this side. Back-to-back outright wins away from home – against Rajasthan and Punjab – have given Bengal the required confidence. Of course, Odisha are playing on their home patch, on a rock-hard pitch, with a tinge of green, at the DRIEMS College ground, where they have won three matches with bonus points – with four seven-pointers in the group stage in total. But they qualified from the weaker Elite Group C, and on paper cannot match Bengal’s firepower, at least bowling-wise.
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Then again, this could be a banana skin for the visitors and they need to guard against complacency. Maybe, that was the reason even the fast bowlers were made to go through their paces on the eve of a five-day game. Optional practice sessions before multi-day fixtures, especially for fast bowlers, has become a fad in Indian cricket of late. Lal rubbished it. “I don’t believe in that. If you can’t do it here, how can you do it there (in the match)? This is too much of mollycoddling. This workload management theory I don’t believe. Good that if someone gets unfit, another one gets a chance and the bench strength increases.”
Bowling has been Bengal’s strength this season. They have collectively have taken 113 wickets in eight group league matches. Mind, three of those games, at Eden Gardens, were affected by bad weather. Left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed is the find of the season, with 29 scalps and 281 runs. Rookie fast bowler Akash Deep stood up to be counted with 25 wickets. That only one century has been scored against Bengal this term – by Kerala’s Sanju Samson – speaks volumes for the team’s bowling.
Bengal, however, are likely to be without Akash Deep in the quarterfinal, for he is nursing a groin injury. But Porel is back after his stint with India A in New Zealand and his arrival is a real boost. Another area of concern is captain Abhimanyu Easwaran’s form, as he has scored only one half-century in this campaign. The added responsibility seems to be pulling the opener down, and is reflected in his tentative feet movement.
Little wonder then that Lal has had a few one-on-one sessions with Easwaran, where the suggestion was to focus on singles. “Think one, not four. In cricket, there’s a gospel truth that when you don’t get runs, take one and stand at the non-striker’s end. Spend an hour at the crease and everything will be all right,” the coach said.
After scoring back-to-back centuries in the first two matches, Abhishek Raman, too, has hit a slump and it would be interesting to see if Sudip Chatterjee replaces him.
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Odisha are into the knockouts after three seasons. Coach Rashmi Ranjan Parida’s message to the team was to prove that they were good enough not to be in Group C. The primary goal has been achieved. But Odisha cricket at the moment is suffering from a dearth of talent. In the late 1990s and at the turn of the century, Odisha was producing good players. Debasis Mohanty, Sanjay Raul and Shib Sunder Das went on to play for the national team. Before that Ranjib Biswal knocked on the door.Then, as the Odisha Premier League (OPL) was introduced in 2011, priorities changed for young cricketers. “They started to use the OPL as a platform, with an eye on the IPL. It negatively affected their cricket, because they couldn’t grow as proper first-class players,” Parida observed.
The OPL stopped after three seasons but the downside of it was that a lot of youngsters chose to take the easier route. And let alone India potential, Odisha at the moment are not even producing players good enough to be considered for India A. Club cricket gradually losing its sheen doesn’t help matters. From that perspective, the match against Bengal is very important for the hosts. If they can pull off an upset and progress further, some players might gain prominence. Odisha have an experienced batting line-up and even without the injured Rajesh Mohanty, their pace attack, led by Basant Mohanty, is pretty decent.