Ganguly to lead Bengal in Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy

Kolkata: Sourav Ganguly will lead Bengal in its title defence in the Twenty20 championship for the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy to be held in Mumbai from March 23-27.

The former India captain earlier this month guided the team to Vijay Hazare title and came as an "obvious choice" for the job. "Ganguly`s selection is obvious. He led us to the national one-dayers title in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. He said he was okay with it," CAB General Secretary Biswarup Dey said on Tuesday. Bengal will also receive a big boost with the return of Manoj Tiwary and Ashok Dinda, who are currently in Bangladesh for the four-nation Asia Cup. The selectors retained majority of the members, who won the one-day competition recently, with an addition of only two new faces in all-rounder Alok Sharma and Aritra Chatterjee. Having topped the East zone leg, Bengal will directly play the quarter-finals on March 25, taking on the winners of Baroda and Karnataka. Squad: Sourav Ganguly (c), Manoj Tiwary, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Anustup Majumdar, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Arnab Nandi, Sanjib Sanyal, Aritra Chatterjee, Iresh Saxena, Mohammad Shami Ahmed, Ashoke Dinda, Subhamoy Das, Debabrata Das, Shreevats Goswami, Alok Sharma. PTI