How strong are the Duleep trophy teams?

[fwullah]

I heard from somewhere (may be in this forum on another thread) that Australia's domestic teams are stronger than England's because the number of teams are less in Australia than in England.

How about the Duleep trophy teams? How strong are they? In between Australia and England? And will any particular Indian national or former national player play in the teams that we're set to play against?

[AsifTheManRahman]

East Zone Squad:



Sourav Ganguly (Captain)
LR Shukla
Rohan Gavaskar
Arindam Das
Sanjib Sanyal
Shib Shankar Paul
Ranadeb Bose
SS Das
Sanjay Satpathy
Deepak Mangaraj
P Jayachandra
MS Dhoni
Shahid Khan
Rajagopal Sathish
Sujit Roy


cricinfo

[AsifTheManRahman]

Central Zone Squad:


Mohammad Kaif (Captain)
Suresh Raina
Faiz Fazal
Murali Kartik
Kulamani Parida
Praveen Gupta
Yogesh Golwalkar
S Abbas Ali
+Naman Ojha
Nikhil Doru
Sanjay Bangar
Jai Prakash Yadav
Rudra Pratap Singh
Harvinder Singh
Amit Pagnis

cricinfo again

[AsifTheManRahman]

Now, for comparsion,

Bangladesh Squad:



Mohammad Ashraful (Captain)
Al Shahriar
Rajan Saleh
Nafis Iqbal
Aftab Ahmed
Alok Kapali
Manjural Islam Rana
+ Sahagir Hossain Pavel
Abdur Razzak
Talha Jubair
Nazmul Hossain
Tareq Aziz
Anwar Hossain Monir

once again, cricinfo

[AsifTheManRahman]

Looks like a very strong BD team in terms of batting. What we will lack is firepower in the bowling department. We don't have any specialist spinners either (I wouldn't consider Rana to be a "specialist"). To me, it looks like a pretty unbalanced team. Considering the way the batsmen collapsed in the first couple of games, it appears that the team with the better bowling attack will have a greater chance of winning - an area where we are highly disadvantaged.

As for the opposition, i've posted only the ones who we will face in the first round. East zone should be easy to beat, as I don't see anyone other than Paul and Dhani causing any problems. Sourav is not plating, and Das has long been out of the national team. Rohan Gavaskar is a born loser. The others aren't very well known.

The central zone has Kaif, Kartik and Bangar. Harvinder Singh is history, and the rest aren't very well known.

Had our bowling been a bit stronger, I'd have put my money in my home bank. However, now I have my fingers crossed, although I believe we should be playing in the finals.

[AsifTheManRahman]

oh wait - we have abdur razzaq. but still, he has been kind of out of form recently.

[AsifTheManRahman]

This is what the other teams look like:


South Zone


Rahul Dravid (Captain)
VVS Laxman
Rowland Barrington
S Sriram
+Dinesh Karthik
Anil Kumble
R Jesuraj
S Sharath
Robin Uthappa
R Vinay Kumar
Y Venugopal Rao
L Balaji
R Ramkumar
MR Srinivas
Swapnil Asnodkar


West Zone

Ajit Agarkar (Captain)
Rajesh Pawar
Wasim Jaffer
Ramesh Power
Vinit Indulkar
Satyajit Parab
Siddharth Trivedi
Zaheer Khan
Rakesh Patel
Kiran Powar
Niraj Patel
+Parthiv Patel
Akash Christian
Dheeraj Jadhav
Jaydev Shah
Ranjit Khirid


North Zone

Virender Shewag (Captain)
Dinesh Mongia
Gautam Gambhir
Aakash Chopra
Amit Bhandari
Ashish Nehra
Yuvraj Singh
Raveent Ricky
Harbhajan Singh
Gagandeep Singh
Sangram Singh
+Manvinder Bisla
Pankaj Dharmani
Amit Mishra
Joginder Sharma
Vishal Bhatia


source cricinfo

[AsifTheManRahman]

with more names from the north and south ringing bells, i'd classify them as relatively stronger. the west are okay.

overall, i'd rank the indian teams between the aussies and the english, with a tight competition between them and the english.

[Huda]

the duleep trphy is behind the ranji trohpy, which is just as good a standard as the aussie domestic league

[couger]

A nation's full test team is a pretty good indication of what there domestic league will be like. So, Australian domestic league sgould be better than not just England but all the others as well.

[BangladeshFan]

bd squad looks ok with rana and razzak there. i guess one of them can be taken for england tour apart from rafiq and enamul.
rana is a good choice considering he is a grafter and will probably do well in indian wickets for batting, and he is a more than useful spinner.

If the batting clicks and with a little luck, i think bd can go on to semifinals (dont know how the tournament works, will there be semifinals or just the final?)

[AsifTheManRahman]

Originally posted by BangladeshFan
(dont know how the tournament works, will there be semifinals or just the final?)

there you go - cricinfo presents the answer to your question!


Duleep Trophy, 2004-05, Schedule

Date Between Venue


15-18 Feb North Zone v West Zone Luknow
15-18 Feb East Zone v Central Zone Gwalior
22-25 Feb South Zone v West Zone Hyderabad
22-25 Feb East Zone v Bangaldesh Nagpur
1-4 Mar North Zone v South Zone Indore
1-4 Mar Central Zone v Bangaldesh Jaipur
8-12 Mar Final Nagpur

[Fazal]

Don't expect too much from this team. The bowling is pretty ordinary. In a decent pitch the opponent can score huge against our ordinary bowling. However so far the pitch looks like under-developed and bowler friendly.

I am looking for some good individual performance, specially in the batting side. Anything else is a plus.

[mahbubH]

Who will open batting with Nafis?

[AsifTheManRahman]

I'm guessing it'll be Rokon. They won't send in Rajin or Ash.