CHENNAI: A near full strength Tamil Nadu team will take on Baroda in Vadodara from February 6-9 in the final round of Ranji Trophy group league matches.
R Prasanna, who missed the last two and-a-half games with injury, passed a fitness test on Thursday. However, Abhinav Mukund, who led Tamil Nadu to victories against UP and Mumbai in Prasanna’s absence, remains skipper.
“We decided to continue with Abhinav, even though Prasanna is fit, because we did not want to disturb the momentum. Abhinav did well in the last two games,” said a source.
Mukund scored a century against UP and under him, the team won the bonus point in both matches, which make them strong contenders for one of the three quarterfinal berths available for teams of this group. S Suresh Kumar and R Sathish, who played in those games, have been dropped.
Medium pacer J Kaushik too cleared the fitness test. Seamer Prasanth Parameswaran, who has switched over from Kerala this season, got a surprise call up. “We don’t know how the wicket is going to be. To be on the safe side, we picked four seamers and three spinners. If it’s a seaming track, we will play three meidum pacers,” said the source.
Squad: Abhinav Mukund (captain), M Vijay, U Sushil, B Aparajith, Dinesh Karthik, B Indrajith, R Prasanna, L Balaji, Vijay Shankar, Malolan Rangarajan, Rahil Shah, R Aushik Srinivas, K Bharath Shankar, Ashwin Crist, J Kaushik, Prasanth Parameswaran.
Ranji wrap
At Guwahati: Andhra 137 (M Kaif 60; A Das 4-24, S Purkayastha 3-35) vs Assam 32-1.
At Vadodara: Mumbai 218-6 (S Mangela 55, A Tare 67 no) vs Baroda.
At Kolkata: Bengal 268 (A Easwaran 57, M Tiwary 68, S Goswami 62; Anureet Singh 4-45) vs Railways.
At Porvorim: Jharkhand 229-2 (S Gautam 72 no, S Tiwary 100 no) vs Goa.
At Valsad: Gujarat 277-7 (Y Venugopal Rao 104; A Sanklecha 3-62) vs Maharashtra.
At Rohtak: Haryana 339-7 (H Rana 149, N Saini 100; A Choudhary 3-79) vs Rajasthan.
At Agartala: Himachal Pradesh 314-4 (A Kalsi 63, P Dogra 106 no, R Dhawan 64 no) vs Tripura.
At Indore: Madhya Pradesh 271-4 (Jalaj Saxena 89, N Ojha 85, D Bundela 62 no) vs J & K.
At Bengaluru: Karnataka 326-4 (K L Rahul 150, S Gopal 88 no; P Kumar 3-34) vs Uttar Pradesh.
At Kannur: Kerala 273-4 (S Samson 143 no) vs Services.
At Chandigarh: Punjab 167 (M Gony 51; B Mohanty 4-43, D Behera 4-47) vs Odisha 54-1.
At Nagpur: Vidarbha 274-6 (Ganesh Satish 119 no; S Shrivastava 50) vs Delhi.